The current application is for support for the 44th annual ASN meeting, which will be held as a joint meeting with the International Society for Neurochemistry in Cancun, Mexico April 20th-24th, 2013. NIH funding for previous ASN meetings has provided invaluable support for our scientific programs and for enhancing graduate student and postdoctoral fellow attendance and involvement in our meeting. NIH support this year will not only help ASN achieve its goals, but will assist the US Government in achieving its goals of promoting the establishment of global scientific networks and in enhancing diplomatic relations in countries where relationships are strained. With this year's meeting joined with the annual ISN meeting, there will be even greater breadth to our scientific conference ensuring a richer intellectual experience for meeting delegates. This year's ASN meeting will provide increased opportunities for delegates to exchange ideas and to form new international collaborations because total attendance is expected to be 1300 scientists from over 30 countries. While the scientific program is rich, there will be numerous spaces in our program for delegates to congregate informally during the meeting or at pre-meeting satellites. The Society will continue its tradition of enhancing the professional development of junior investigators during the meeting through several mechanisms. We have organized luncheons with our internationally recognized plenary speakers to give our fellows opportunities to informally meet with these speakers. The fees for these luncheons are reduced for students and postdoctoral fellows. There is a dinner exclusively for students and postdoctoral fellows, which is repeatedly recognized as an outstanding opportunity to network. There is a luncheon entitled """"""""Women in Neurochemistry"""""""" that is open to all attendees, and junior investigators have reduced fees. There are 3, 30 minute featured lectures for young investigators and 3 sessions that are selected from abstracts submitted that will allow up to 18 fellows to present their research orally. There are travel awards for outstanding graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to defray their costs of attendance. We host a job- posting site and students can meet with potential future mentors or colleagues during the meeting. Recently, we added a half-day program for visiting high- school students to engage these future scientists during their formative years, (which we are introducing to the ISN at this meeting) to bring talented Mexican high school students to our conference. From results of yearly exit surveys, we know that the annual ASN meeting has and will continue to provide an excellent venue for cutting edge neuroscience and for enhancing the careers of young investigators.
This proposal requests support for the 44th annual meeting of the American Society for Neurochemistry, which will be held jointly with the International Society for Neurochemistry meeting, and will take place April 20th to 25th 2013 in Cancun, Mexico. Support for this meeting will provide valuable assistance to this Society to publicly present new developments in neurochemistry. This annual meeting provides the latest information on advances in molecular and cellular neurobiology. Studies on numerous neurological diseases are presented. A large part of the support requested will help keep registration fees low for young investigators and will be used to support educational and networking events for high school students, graduate students, postdocs, young investigators, women and minorities.
