The Neurotrauma Society Meeting is held annual as a satellite symposium of the Society for Neuroscience Meeting, this year in LA. The theme for this fall s meeting is Recovery from Neurotrauma, from molecules to man . The meeting lasts for 2 full days, just before the NS meeting, and is balanced between lectures and posters (four sessions, grouped by topic, with assigned times for author presentation). There are 5 regular lecture sessions (1 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon) where internationally recognized (and hence in general more senior investigators) give 20 minutes talks with 10 minute of discussion. Poster sessions occur as one hour breaks in each morning and afternoon schedule. To provide a more open format, there are also 2 Open Communication Sessions where 12 speakers will be chosen from submitted abstracts by the program committee and more junior investigators will have a chance to present their material orally (10 minute talks with 5 minute discussions). The top 18 student posters will be judged for a special student poster competition (with two cash prizes contributed by industry). Abstracts will be made available on the Web, so that participants can schedule the posters they wish to visit in advance, and the proceeds will be published in the Journal of Neurotrauma, which is the official journal of both the national and international chapters of the Neurotrauma Society. A recent letter from the PI has confirmed all of the invited speakers and session chairs. This meeting has been held annually since 1982 and has grown over the years so that last year there were 15-20 invited speakers, 200 posters, and 350-400 attendees. Only 1/3 of the society members are also members of the SN, and attendees include a large number of clinicians, for whom this is a chance to learn what new basic research findings have been made in this field. A major aim of the society is to encourage students and postdocs in this area. This is done via travel grants, awards for the best submitted abstracts, and the opportunity to present their work as a short lecture for the best abstracts. Another aim is to encourage participation of qualified women and minorities in neurotrauma research. To this end, there is newly chartered Women in Neurotrauma Research (WINTR) which hosts a panel discussion during lunch of the first day (past years: opportunities for funding and a mock study section, this year a discussion of how to integrate research with family obligations for women and for dual career couples in general).
