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2014 IBRO Fellows New Cajal Training Programme Pan-Europe Committee 2
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addiction field. Pak Kan (Jacque) Ip, the 2014 IBRO Rita Levi-Montalcini Research Fellow from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, has investigated the molecular mechanism of cortex development. With the IBRO Research Fellowship, he will work at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT (Boston, USA) under the supervision of Prof. Mriganka Sur, focusing on the pathophysiology of autism spectrum disorders. Dr. Ip has developed a strong interest in neuropsychiatric disorders during his PhD research: My long-term goal is to use multiple approaches including molecular biology and circuit neuroscience to study how specific gene mutation leads to various defects in neuropsychiatric diseases, he wrote. The IBRO fellowship will provide an invaluable opportunity to be trained, in a worldclass laboratory, on deciphering the complex neuronal circuits and its role in autism. This training opportunity will allow me to combine this expertise in molecular biology with cutting-edge circuit neuroscience. IBRO (the International Brain Research Organization) is the global neuroscience federation dedicated to the promotion of neuroscience and communication between brain researchers around the world, with special emphasis on assisting young investigators in the developing world. Incorporated in 1961, IBRO now counts more than 80 member societies in over 60 countries around the world, with a membership of more than 75,000 neuroscientists.
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IBRO and FENS collaborate in IBRO Alumni Committee shines the spotlight launching the Cajal Training on inspiring young scientists Programme
Since the initiation of the FENS (Federation of European Neuroscience Societies)IBRO European Neuroscience Schools Programme in 2006, more than 1000 neuroscience students from throughout the European continent have received training through two-week neuroscience schools. However, despite the recognized position of European neuroscience and brain research as leading in multiple fields of neuroscience, a high-level, coordinated and dedicated training facility for neuroscience does not currently exist in Europe, similar to Cold Spring Harbor or Woods Hole in the United States. The establishment of a prominent site for state-of-the-art European neuroscience training courses is important for the sustained development of the next generation of neuroscientists, said FENS President Marian Jols. Therefore FENS, with IBRO as a full partner, has decided to replace their Schools Programme with a Centre of Excellence Programme to draw participants from throughout Europe. The plan is to provide approximately six training activities per year, with courses spanning five years. IBROs commitment will ensure that the trainings held at the Centres of Excellence will also be open for students from outside of Europe, said IBRO SecretaryGeneral Sten Grillner. In the past several years, the IBRO Alumni Committee has selected top-quality students from IBROs other Neuroscience Schools in other regions to participate in FENS-IBRO Neuroscience Schools, a successful initiative that IBRO Officers want to continue. The two institutes chosen the University of Bordeaux (France) and the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown (Lisbon, Portugal) were selected from an open bid process that called for, among other criteria, a faculty performing high-level neuroscience research as well as a commitment for maintaining training activities over several years. The course program will start with a Bordeaux (France), with a history of organizing minimum of two courses in successful courses within the FENS-IBRO Schools Programme, will potentially host four advanced Bordeaux in 2015 and one in training courses per year. Champalimaud, scaling up to a steady rate of at least four advanced training courses in Bordeaux per year, starting in 2016, with two other courses at the Champalimaud campus. By Susan Sara (France), Chair: The major initiative of the Committee in the past few years has been to organize a series of alumni symposia within regional and international meetings. We organized and supported three such symposia in 2013: Alumni Symposium at the 2013 annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience: November 10, 2013, in San Diego, USA. Co-chaired by former IBRO Alumni Symposium speaker Dr. Hailan Hu, the four speakers were all recipients of IBRO return home grants and have recently established their own laboratories with the help of IBRO. Miranda Mladinic (Croatia/Italy), Pedro Bekenschtein (Argentina), Mir Shahram Safari (Iran/Japan) and Mario Perell (Argentina) presented their research under the theme Modulation of neuronal networks for behavioral adaptation: IBRO alumni around the world on the cutting edge of neuroscience. Alumni Symposium at the 2013 Meeting of the Society of Neuroscientists of Africa (SONA): June 14, 2013, in Rabat, Morocco. Karim Fifel (Morocco), Solomon Umukoro (Nigeria), Toni-Lee Sterley (South Africa), Bamidele Victor Owoyele (Nigeria) and Philip A. Adeniyi (Nigeria) presented their research under the theme Animal models for therapeutic intervention in neuropathological disorders. Alumni Speakers at the NEURONUS 2013 IBRO & IRUN Neuroscience Forum: May 9-11, 2013, in Krakow, Poland. A session entitled Basic Neuroscience was chaired by
Matthew Holt from the VIB Center for the Biology of Disease, KU Leuven in Belgium, who gave a presentation entitled Fundamental Mechanics of Membrane Trafficking: Lessons from the Central Nervous System. Anthony Holtmaat from the University of Geneva in Switzerland presented a keynote lecture titled Compound mechanisms for sensory map plasticity in the mouse barrel cortex. Both IBRO International Alumni Lecturers also participated in a Scientific Career Opportunities session held on the opening evening of the meeting, giving students and young and beginning neuroscientists an opportunity to learn more about scientific career pathways, experiences, and possibilities in a convivial and supportive atmosphere. IBRO Alumni Lecture at the 2013 FENS Featured Regional Meeting: September 12, 2013, in Prague, Czech Republic. FENS-IBRO School Alumna Ileana Hanganu-Opatz (University of Hamburg, Germany) delivered a lecture titled Ontogeny of uni- and multisensory perception in rodents. Additionally, the IBRO Alumni Committee supported Jimmy Olusakin from Kampala University, Uganda to attend the FENS-IBRO Summer Synapse School at the Bordeaux, France, training center in September 2013. This initiative follows the highly successful program established three years ago to bring top students from IBRO Schools to European Neuroscience Schools, funded by the Alumni Committee. After the School, Dr. Olusakin spent one week in Paris at the laboratory of Thomas Prat.
IBROs commitment will ensure that the The 2013 SfN IBRO Alumni Speakers, who have each benefitted from IBROs Return Home Program (left to right): Mario Perell , trainings held at the Centres of Excellence Pedro Bekenschtein, Miranda Mladinic and Mir Shahram Safari. will also be open for students from outside IBRO honors former president of Europe.
The Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown a state-of-the-art biomedical research facility with an impressive new set of buildings located directly on the Atlantic coast of Lisbon, Portugal houses the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme (CNP), which hosts around 150 scientists and staff is lead by 15 independent investigators. CNP laboratories apply advanced molecular, physiological and imaging techniques to elucidate the function of neural circuits and systems in animal models that include Drosophila, mouse, rat and zebrafish. Neuroscience research in Bordeaux has become, over the past 10 years, one of the most attractive sites across Europe, with more than 50 research groups organized in institutes and research units affiliated to the University of Bordeaux, the CNRS, the INSERM and the INRA. Bordeaux has a history of organizing attractive courses within the FENS /IBRO schools programme. The new advanced courses organized in Bordeaux will greatly benefit from technical facilities equipped with the best up-to-date equipment in Molecular and Cellular imaging, functional imaging in vivo, functional genomics , animal behavior, human behavior and psychopharmacology, and a movement analysis platform. Due to the high complementarity between the Bordeaux and Champalimaud venues, the absolute range of courses that may be offered through such a dual model will be quite remarkable with respect to topics, disciplines and technical infrastructure, said Professor Grillner.
On November 9, 2013, IBRO Secretary-General Sten Grillner led the IBRO Governing Council and Regional and Program Chairs participating in the meeting in a toast to two-term IBRO President Carlos Belmonte, whose second term in office finished at the end of 2013. Professor Belmonte thanked the IBRO Governing Council for its trust in him during his presence in IBRO and also acknowledged the other IBRO leaders for being extremely positive and helpful, as well as the IBRO staff for being solution-oriented. IBRO has progressed substantially in recent years in terms of consolidating its global role in developing world neuroscience, and this is a result of the efforts of all the people sitting here today, said Professor Belmonte, whose leadership of IBRO has spanned several decades.
Carlos Belmonte talks with IBRO Governing Council members during his final meeting as IBRO President, the role in which he served since 2008.
During his term in office as the IBRO Secretary-General from 1998-2001, Dr. Belmonte was instrumental in the reorganization of IBRO into six regions based on geographic, social and economic criteria. This structure has succeeded in giving neuroscientists in different parts of the world a direct voice in defining their own needs and priorities in research and science education. His recent contributions as IBRO President include working collaboratively with national and regional neuroscience societies in joint programs, as well as fostering the advancement of neuroscience research in the developing world, with a strong emphasis on excellence. He championed the idea of bringing together brilliant young neuroscientists to forge friendships and research collaborations that will continue as they become the future leaders in neuroscience.
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Junior Women Neuroscientists in Africa: A Sample from North, South, East and West Africa SONA 2013 (Rabat, Morocco) This symposium, co-sponsored by WWN, was proposed and chaired by Abdul Mohammed (Sweden/Kenya) and Nouria Lakhdar-Ghazal (Morocco), and attracted more than one hundred participants. Female Neuroscientists on the Move: From Bench to Bedside and Back SONA 2013 (Rabat, Morocco) All presentations at this symposium highlighted the work of female neuroscientists engaged in research spanning from Basic to Translational and Clinical Research. Global Mentoring Program: Enhancing Access Through Skype WWN has provided six Skype units to WWN members in developing countries in order to facilitate on-line mentoring at the Punjwani Centre for Molecular Medicine and Drug Research, University of Karachi (Pakistan) and the Department of Pediatrics and Child Health, Makerere University (Uganda). Functional Approaches to Increase Collaborations and Strengthen Research Networks WWN sponsored this symposium held during the 2013 Society for Neuroscience meeting.
IBRO officially merges its two European regional committees, creating the Pan-Europe Regional Committee (PERC)
A new IBRO regional committee, the Pan-Europe Regional Committee (PERC), has been officially formed, combining what were previously the IBRO Central & Eastern Europe Regional Committee (CEERC) and the IBRO Western Europe Regional Committee (WERC). At a joint meeting with CEERC and WERC members held in Krakow, Poland, on May 11, 2013, the two committees voted to merge their identities into one committee serving all of Europe, as well as operate from the same budget starting in 2014. The former CEERC and WERC were created in 1995, defined and created largely based on the consequences of the political and ideological differences existing at the time, according to IBRO past President Carlos Belmonte, who was serving as IBROs SecretaryGeneral when the two separate committees were formed. Much has changed in Europe and the world, since then. I believe the integration of the two European regions into a single one is a rather logical action, said PERC Chair Juan Lerma. No doubt this is a step forward towards making a stronger Europe, because both regions could benefit from each other in fostering neuroscience. In the past several years, the CEERC and WERC have been collaborating on programs such as the InEurope Short Stay Grants program, which increases intra-European mobility of young researchers by providing grants for short, goaldirected exchanges within European laboratories, so that they can acquire new methods or specific techniques that are necessary for their work. New plans are underway to launch programs that will encourage further cross-Europe collaboration.
In November 2013, the IBRO Ethics in Research Committee organized a workshop in Montevideo, Uruguay, to review national policies across Latin America and to coordinate regional activities.
New committee aims to optimize resources and opportunities for young European neuroscientists, as well as strengthen cross-Europe collaboration.
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The 2012 Neuroscience Cover Competition winner features illustration depicting the role of endocannabinoids in the extinction of fear
The winning cover of IBROs annual Neuroscience Cover Competition for 2012 is from an article by C.J. Riebe, F. Pamplona, K. Kamprath and C.T. Wotjak, titled Fear relief - towards a new conceptual frame work and what endocannabinoids gotta do with it. The article and corresponding cover illustration were featured in a special edition of Neuroscience (volume 204, pp 159-185) that was published in March 2012, titled Stress, Emotional Behavior and the Endocannabinoid System. First author and originator of the winning cover design, Fabricio Pamplona, is a scientific researcher of the D'Or Institute of Research and Education (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). Also serving as articles first author is Caitlin Riebe, from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry Research Group on Neuronal Plasticity (Munich, Germany). The winning cover featured an image of a man working to balance himself while walking across a tightrope. Dr. Pamplona explains the significance of the image as follows: We represented the endocannabinoids as a balance stick that helps a person to walk across the stressful events of the daily life in a urban scenario. The daredevil picture represents somebody that faces its challenges with confidence. And I wonder if such a person must have a well-tuned endocannabinoid system to keep safe."
Patrik Verstreken to be awarded 2014 IBRO-Kemali Prize for Research in the Field of Basic and Clinical Neurosciences
The Ninth International Prize of the IBRO-Kemali Foundation will be awarded to Patrik Verstreken of VIB (Flanders Institute for Biotechnology) and KU Leuven, (University of Leuven), Belgium. The IBRO-Kemali International Prize for Research in the Field of Basic and Clinical Neurosciences is awarded every two years to an outstanding researcher, under the age of 45, who has made important contributions in the field. As the winner of this prize, 38year-old Patrik Verstreken will receive 25,000 Euros from the IBRO-Kemali Foundation and will be invited to give a featured lecture at the 2014 Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) Forum of Neuroscience, taking place from July 5 to 9 in Milan, Italy. "Patrik Verstreken was chosen to receive the 2014 IBRO-Kemali Prize in recognition of his outstanding Young Belgian has work on mechanisms underlying presynaptic transmitter produced seminal release, and its relevance to neurodegenerative research on synaptic diseases," said Marina Bentivoglio, chair of the IBRO- transmission and Kemali Foundation Scientific Committee. The Parkinsons disease. IBRO-Kemali Foundation (formerly the Dargut and Milena Kemali Foundation) was established in 1996 by Dargut Kemali, a renowned psychiatrist at the University of Naples, and by the will of his late wife Milena Agostini Kemali (1926-1993). Upon Dargut Kemalis death in 2011, IBRO absorbed the Foundation, according to his wishes.
The IBRO Global Advocacy Initiative: Interview with Sten Grillner (Continued from page 1)
From your perspective, what are the key points about the brain that most need to be conveyed to both the public and lawmakers? That the brain is of central importance from many different perspectives, such as to: understand the normal function of the brain and thereby ourselves, maintain a healthy brain throughout life, understand the many devastating diseases of the brain that make patients suffer and are responsible for no less than one third of the costs for health care in Europe and elsewhere, develop new forms of therapy, including novel forms of drugs, transfer the knowledge of learning and memory to the field of education, utilize the knowledge of the brain for the development of robots that can perceive the environment and use this information to make rational decisions. Such service robots should be designed to assist humans with everyday tasks, and also patients. How does the IBRO roadmap for global advocacy differ from the projects already initiated by SfN and FENS? The FENS/SfN project can be considered a pilot project, in which the various European Neuroscience societies took part in a workshop highlighting successful examples of advocacy from different countries, including those in North America, and the strategies followed by national initiatives. With this as a background we have now started to implement a global plan, in which each region (i.e., South America, the Asian-Pacific area and Africa) will organize similar workshops. What do you see as the biggest barriers to increasing resources for neuroscience research in less developed regions of the world? As is the case in some developed regions as well, the local economies dont allow for making research a priority. What is even more significant is that the political leaders may not realize why to engage in brain research. Therefore our task is to alert our national societies to the need for them to engage in advocacy, to inform lawmakers and the public of the need. And that they should support research perhaps in particular centers in which competence can be developed. Are there plans to increase the partners and resources with which IBRO is working, to boost critical mass in terms of influencing policymakers around the world and the lay public? Yes, we have plans to reach out to other like-minded associations, and we have been also expanding from the initiation, with the addition of the Dana Foundation and the International Society for Neurochemistry, for example. How will IBRO identify the top priorities and challenges for each region or country? In each of the IBRO regions during 2014 we will have a workshop including all the national societies, with a program that should include speakers with different backgrounds and skills in advocacy, as well as regional and national funding agencies, and also relevant political organizations or academies. For example, in Africa we want to include the African Academy of Sciences. The goal will be to bring all the different viewpoints together to identify the key issues, priorities, resources and actionable steps. This will be followed by actions during 2015-16 funded by the seed money we have collected thus far, and perhaps other types of funding.
What are your goals for IBRO during your term as President? I think IBRO can play a very important role in Global Advocacy. I would also like to continue IBROs past President Carlos Belmontes vision to continue to differentiate between the early and the more advanced stages of IBRO schools. In particular I intend to further consolidate the IBRO College model, where very talented and well-trained neuroscientists from less favored countries can interact with young
faculty from more established countries to form collaborative relationships among the future leaders in neuroscience. Also, as IBROs Secretary-General, I was very involved in developing the MENA region and IBRO has already been successful in Africa and South America, but I think we can also be very useful in highpotential countries such as China and India, and I would like to become more familiar with their needs and expectations.
How can IBRO help meet the challenges facing neuroscientists in developing parts of the world? Training is a large part of IBROs efforts. IBRO also helps well-trained scientists go back to their home countries and expand upon their competencies in ways that are meaningful for the local needs there. IBRO also works to establish neuroscience competencies and capacity-building in less favored regions by nurturing solid connections between countries with established
neuroscience programs and those with fewer resources. As IBROs Ambassador to the World, what are the key messages about IBRO that you most wish to convey? Organizations such as IBRO are a testimony to the fact that science works without borders. Serving as a common language, science can secure a better world and serve as a bridge between different cultures, carrying a message of peace. I really hope the
IBRO meeting in Rio de Janeiro, in 2015, will be a success, and I call upon all the neuroscientists in the world to be there. Its a different meeting from those taking place in the US, Europe and in the national societies, in that it is truly international with scientists from all over the world, and we should support it as much as we can. The Congresss excellent International Program Committee will ensure an outstanding program.
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In Guangzhou, China, PhD students came from China, Pakistan, India, Malaysia, Nepal and Thailand to participate in the IBRO School on the subject of probing the activity of the neural network in the brain.
Sharon Juliano (USA) leads a workshop session at the 36th IBRO Africa Region Neuroscience School, "Salvaging neurons: blending basic and clinical neuroscience," in Ibadan, Nigeria.
At this hands-on College in Valdivia, Chile, practical activities gave students firsthand experience with techniques they need to know or to implement for their own projects.
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New IBRO Regional Committee Middle East/Northern Africa Chairs Announced Sub-Region (MENA)
Four new regional committee chairs have been appointed this year, responsible for leading their committees in planning and implementing the professional-development and capacity-building activities carried out locally, within their respective region: Dora Fix Ventura has been elected the new chair of the IBRO Latin America Regional Committee (LARC). She is a Full Professor at the University of So Paulo (USP) Institute of Psychology in So Paulo, Brazil, was Vice Dean of the Institute, and was twice Head of the Department of Experimental Psychology there. In addition, she has been a founder, board member and president of several scientific societies. Recently, she was awarded the Neurocincias Brasil Medal by the Sociedade Brasileira de Neurocincias e Comportamento SBNeC (2010). Pierre Mesu'a-Kabwa Luabeya, Professor of Neurology at the Haute Ecole de la Province de Namur, Belgium, and the Kinshasa University School of Medecine, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), has been appointed as the new chair of the IBRO Africa Regional Committee (ARC). One of the founding members of the ARC, Prof. Luabeya is also an active member of the Association pour la Promotion des Neurosciences (APRONES). Through his work with both IBRO and APRONES, Prof. Luabeya has strengthened links with local, regional, international societies of neurosciences, such as the Congolese League Against Epilepsy and the World Federation of Neurology. The IBRO Asia-Pacific Regional Committee has appointed as its new chair Keiji Tanaka, Deputy Director of the RIKEN Brain Science Institute and the Laboratory Head of its Cognitive Brain Mapping Laboratory in Wako, Japan. He has served on the committee of the Human Frontier Research Program (HFSP) for long-term fellow selection, on the Governing Board of the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility, and on the organizing committee of the Cold Spring Harbor Asia First Neuroscience Symposium. In 2008 Professor Tanaka was awarded Science and Technology Prize by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and he won the Neuronal Plasticity Prize from the IPSEN Foundation in 2007.
Dora Fix Ventura
Keiji Tanaka
Sharon Juliano, of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USA), was recently elected as chair of the U.S./Canada Regional Committee. She has played a vital role in promoting neuroscience education and training in the global community through her organization of workshops and courses in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa, and has also previously served as the Chair of IBRO's Ethics in Research Committee. Professor Juliano has been Sharon Juliano honored with several awards, including the Flexner Award for Outstanding Research (Institute for Neurological Sciences) and the Distinguished Service Medal. In 2012, the Society for Neuroscience presented her with the Award for Education in Neuroscience.
At the 1st International Summer School for Neuropathology and Epilepsy Surgery, held in Erlangen, Germany, funds from IBRO-PERC made it possible for several participants coming from Croatia, Serbia, Portugal, Brazil and Romania to attend.
TTW instructor Nilesh Patel assists workshop participants with a computer program designed to assist in teaching the fundamentals of neuroscience.
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New Writing Workshop for Africans focused on improving chances of getting their research published
To have a successful scientific research career, its either publishor perish. The experience of the IBRO-ARC workshop Getting Your Article Ready for Submission held from June 9 to 12, 2013, in Rabat, Morocco showed that capacitybuilding initiatives aimed at the preparation and submission of scientific manuscripts to indexed journals are much needed for African neuroscientists. In partnership with the Rita LeviMontalcini Foundation, IBRO held its first workshop specifically dedicated to helping young African neuroscience investigators prepare an article for submission to scientific journals. Organized by Marina Bentivoglio (Italy), the event was one of several satellite events sponsored by IBRO taking place in the vicinity of Rabat, Morocco, leading up to the SONA Congress held there. Along with Professor Bentivoglio, the mentors for this workshop included Roger Butterworth (Canada), Krister Kristensson (Sweden) and IBRO Alumnus Samir Ahboucha (Morocco). According to Professor Bentivoglio, the workshop was very practically oriented, with the aim to prepare final versions of manuscripts already drafted by young African investigators, in order to make articles ready for submission to a peer-reviewed journal. The participating students came from Cameroon, Morocco, DR Congo, Zambia, South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. So far, several students have submitted their manuscripts to scientific journals. One of the articles (submitted by the workshop participant Ismail Ogunbayode Ishola pictured left, with his mentor Prof. Butterworth from the University of Lagos, in Nigeria) has been accepted for publication by the NeuroPsychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry journal. Upon notification that his article was accepted to be published, he wrote the following to Professor Bentivoglio: The writing paper workshop was of great help to me. It really changed my art of writing a scientific paper. You and Professor Butterworth deserve so much, as I would not have sent the paper to a journal with this much of an impact factor.
We also spent substantial time on discussion of how to teach effectively on the continent of Africa. Although many regions of Africa have excellent technological capability and access to information, there are many that do not. Teachers can be limited by poor resources, such as lack of electricity, minimal availability to technology, poor or intermittent internet access, or extremely large classes. The TTW participants engaged in active discussion about these issues, as well how to integrate a program of Neuroscience into their curriculum, how to influence their heads of department, and how to motivate their students and colleagues. After leaving the Workshop, the students are encouraged to engage their superiors in discussion about curriculum revision. This past year we received many reports that our participants have presented to their department heads with the hope of creating a Neuroscience curriculum in their facility.
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