Our fellow graduate student and NGSO member, Mike Beckert, was recently featured for how he creatively combines his passions of neuroscience, illustration, and science outreach. The full interview can be found by following this link.
Congratulations to Dr. Elyse Sussman and graduate student Renee Symonds who are recent recipients of a number of awards and honors by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). Dr. Sussman and Renee Symonds received a Research Mentoring-Pair Travel Award (RMPTA) while Ms. Symonds also received both an Audiology/Hearing Science Research Travel Award (ARTA) and a Student Research Travel Award (SRTA) for recent work, entitled “The Impact of Unattended Auditory Cues on Perception & Task Performance in Complex Auditory Environments.” This poster, and the work contained therein, was judged and found to be superlative, being only one of 48, out of over 1900 posters submitted, to earn the “Meritorious Poster” qualification by ASHA.
Congratulations to the 2016 Junior Investigator Neuroscience Research Award (JINRA) awardees!
Randy Stout from the Spray Lab
&
Steven Cook & Leo Tang respectively from the Emmons and Buelow Labs.
For more information about the JINRA program, check out the About Campus feature article.
Dr. Pablo Castillo leads students and postdocs in a study section-like peer review process of grant proposals submitted for Einstein’s Junior Investigator Neuroscience Research Award
We had a great discussion which ranged from the history of connectomics and circuit mapping in model organisms to the purpose of a model and the utility of computational modeling and understanding invertebrate network dynamics in ultimately understanding how larger networks like the brain may function.The conclusion of the discussion was that the future of neuroscience lies in understanding the simultaneous activity of hundreds of thousands of neurons in coordinating behavior.
We look forward to continuing the discussion at the next pasta night!
Thanks to our chefs and everyone who helped clean up and organize for the night!
These items were delivered to the Ecuadorean Consulate in Queens Plaza and from there they will be shipped to Ecuador.
Special thanks to Bryen Jordan and Pablo Lituma for organizing this effort!
To donate to relief efforts in Ecuador, check out some of the links below:
The NGSO is excited to celebrate Brain Awareness Week this year! You can find us at Gun Hill Brewery from 1-5pm for our event: Brains & Beer! In the mean time, check out some of the awesome events going on around NYC!
‘Tis the season for making travel plans for this year’s Society for Neuroscience Meeting!
To help students and postdocs coordinate their travel plans, accommodations, posters, etc at the conference the NGSO has created a google form and shared spreadsheet.
On Saturday May 9th, Lauren Boudewyn of the Walkley Lab will be participating in in the 35 mile UPenn Million Dollar Bike Ride for Rare Disease Research ! Lauren is raising funds for MLIV research (which you may have heard her talk about at WIP!). The NGSO wishes Lauren the best of luck reaching her $400 funding goal.
If you’d like to contribute, please check out Lauren’s site:
Million Dollar Bike Ride: Team Cure ML4
Additional Information from UPenn GivingPages:
Join Me in the Fight to Cure MLIV!
Mucolipidosis Type IV (MLIV) is a lysosomal storage disorder of the brain in which the cell’s recycling center (the lysosome) is not functioning properly to remove cellular debris, leading to the pathological accumulation of material inside cells. In the case of MLIV, this problem arises from mutations in the gene encoding a cation channel located on the lysosome itself, called mucolipin-1. Despite what is known about mucolipin-1, it is not known what exactly is happening in MLIV to neurons lacking the activity of this protein that leads to the disease. Children with MLIV develop intellectual disability, motor deficits, and severe retinal degeneration often resulting in blindness. There is currently no cure or corrective therapy.
My Story
I am a third year graduate student in the Neuroscience Department at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the laboratory of Dr. Steven Walkley, and am focusing my pre-doctoral thesis research on studying MLIV disease. I am researching the specific mechanisms behind MLIV neuronal pathology to better our understanding of the disease and work towards developing potential therapies. Last year I rode 35 miles in the Million Dollar Bike Ride in support of rare disease research and to help raise funds supporting the ML4 Foundation, to work towards a cure. I am very excited to participate again!
For more information about MLIV and to hear some of the children’s stories, please follow this link: http://www.ml4.org/
For more information about the Million Dollar Bike Ride, please follow this link: http://www.milliondollarbikeride.org/
Fellow neuroscience student Fanny Cazettes (Pena Lab) has been featured in the February 20, 2015 issue of eLife news’ “Interviews with early-career researchers” series!
“Fanny Cazettes grew up in the south of France and majored in biomedical engineering at the Institut Superieur des BioSciences (ISBS) in Paris. She is currently a PhD student at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, where she investigates neural activity in owls using physiological, behavioural and computational modelling techniques. She will be applying for a postdoctoral position within the next few months.” , eLife News
Congratulations, Fanny!
The next NGSO Meeting will be Tuesday February 10, 2015 @6:30PM in Kennedy 901
On the Agenda
The Einstein-Montefiore Merger
Neuroscience Outreach
Next Neuroscience Pasta Night
As always, if you have an questions or have something you’d like to see added to the agenda, email the NGSO at ngso@phd.einstein.yu.edu