Division of Neurobiology (DNB): 2008 Spring Newsletter

In this newsletter:

• Message from the Chair
• Message from the Program Officer
• Message from the Secretary

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Message from the Chair

James A. Murray

The annual meeting in San Antonio went very well. Our symposium on Recent Advances in Neurobiology, focused on the gonadatropic axis, was successful and well attended.

The DNB met and discussed the perpetual issues of recruiting and funding. We would like to receive input from a wider selection of the membership, so please contact Duane, Tom, or me.

If you have an idea for a late-breaking symposium for Boston 2009, we need to submit a proposal for funding by April, so please send ideas today! If you make use of local Boston scientists, we can keep the cost low. I will be contacting local members of other neuroscience societies so they are aware of our upcoming meeting and encourage them to attend and join SICB.

For 2010 symposia, we need to send in a proposal to SICB in August, so please send ideas for those in the coming couple of months.

We would also like to solicit pictures and research program descriptions to add to the website. Please contact our divisional secretary Tom Pirtle. Send him a brief paragraph and a photo that depicts your research. These are the photos features in the upper left hand panel on the SICB web page that change when the screen is refreshed. These can help to draw eyes to the SICB website, and to DNB, and hopefully increase recruiting. As with all divisions, we need to increase membership so please recruit your students and colleagues and tell them what an enjoyable annual meeting we have. Also, please encourage your libraries to carry ICB.

In the future, we may try to stagger the election of division officers so we don't all start at the same time (as did Tom, Duane, and I this fall).

We look forward to Boston and the symposia Sensory Biomechanics and Psychoneuroimmunology Meets Integrative Biology. See you all there.

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Message from the Program Officer

Duane McPherson

We are looking forward to the meeting in Boston, and hope you will attend and present a talk or a poster. There is plenty of room for the neurobiology division to expand! And please encourage your neuro colleagues to come to the meeting, too. Along with that, we also need more participation by DNB members in chairing oral presentation sessions and judging student presentations. These are relatively easy tasks, and you're probably going to be at those sessions anyway. We'll provide all the training you need.

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Message from the Secretary

Thomas Pirtle

Greetings to all members of the Division of Neurobiology and other interested readers. This year's meeting in San Antonio was a great success and we look forward to next year's meeting in Boston. At the San Antonio meeting the DNB had contributed 38 abstracts - 22 posters and 16 oral presentations. The best student poster and oral presentation are as follows:

Jessica L. Fox of the University of Washington was awarded The Best Student Oral Presentation for her presentation: Encoding characteristics of haltere mechanoreceptors.

Two students tied for the Best Student Poster Presentation. Rebecca M. Calisi of UC Berkeley was awarded The Best Student Poster Presentation for her presentation: Capture-handling stress and its effect upon hypothalamic EGR-1 and GnIH expression in house sparrows (Passer domesticus) and Kyle Willingham of Abilene Christian University was awarded the Best Student Poster Presentation for his presentation: The effect of the hyperpolarization-activated inward current antagonist, ZD7288, on the locomotor rhythm of Clione limacina. Please visit the SICB website to read the abstracts for these presentations.

Preparations for the 2009 meeting in Boston, recruitment and future meetings need to be addressed. This includes funding, proposals for late-breaking symposia, and updating SICBs website to include more information on DNB as explained above in the Program Officer's report.

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Link to officer list on DNB page