Berlin Brain Days 2010
- Berlin Brain Days 2010 (link to BBD webpage)
- Registration (link to BBD webpage)
- Registration form (download here pdf 271 kb) – to be filled in and sent to bettina.stoehr-please remove this text-@hu-berlin.de
- Poster Berlin Brain Days 2010 (screen version, pdf 228 kb)
Greetings by the Conference Chair
The Berlin Brain Days are an activity of doctoral students across several independent Berlin institutions. Initiated in 2005 by faculty and students in Medical Neurosciences (a doctoral school at the Charité), it has subsequently grown year-by-year as the neuroscientific research and training environment has rapidly developed within the city.
The growth in the number and variety of new doctoral programs within Berlin is quite remarkable. Two research training groups (Graduiertenkollegs) of Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, on “Learning and Memory” (GRK 1123 – Cellular Mechanisms of Learning and Memory Consolidation in the Hippocampal Formation) and on “Neuroinflammation” (GRK 1258 – The Impact of Inflammation on Nervous System Function), were established in 2005 and 2006. In this time the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience was launching its own comprehensive doctoral program in computational neuroscience. Also in 2006, as part of the Excellence Initiative for German universities, the Berlin School of Mind and Brain was established to foster transdisciplinary research at a doctoral level across the mind and brain sciences. And there have been a second and third acquisition of the Excellence Initiative: the excellence clusters “NeuroCure” and “Languages of Emotion”, both with funding for doctoral programs.
In December 2008 and 2009, we first very successfully joined our forces, and the Berlin Brain Days 2010, again, are a common activity of these programs. Students and faculty alike are highly motivated to learn about the research of neighboring programs, and the Berlin Brain Days have become an important forum for information exchange.
Berlin has already had a good tradition in fostering common activities in the neurosciences: the Berlin Neuroscience Forum has been organized every other year since 1997 and is a common activity of all programs and collaborative research centers (Sonderforschungsbereiche, Forschergruppen, Graduiertenkollegs, etc.). It regularly attracts over 200 neuroscientists to a small resort outside of Berlin, Liebenwalde.
In 2009, the success of the Berlin Brain Days inspired a previous keynote speaker from Japan, Professor Mami Noda, to solicit a similar activity in Fukuoka, the Kyushu Brain Days. In 2010, we will welcome for the second time a group of international guests of the Berlin School of Mind and Brain: the winners of the women’s travel award to young neuroscience, linguistics and philosophy students. We look forward to seeing their research as they too will attend the Berlin Brain Days and present posters.
It is in our best interest that we join forces, interact closely, and develop Berlin as a hotspot for research across the neurosciences. With this in mind, I am convinced that we will have a very interactive and successful meeting that will result in new collaborations within the Berlin neuroscience research community.
Helmut Kettenmann, Conference Chair
