By: Chang Liu
Thanks to the support from GSA travel award, I attended this year’s Society for Neuroscience
(SfN) annual meeting on November 9-13, and had a great trip in San Diego. As a graduate
student of the Neuroscience program, I have been working on the auditory system for two
years, trying to unveil the function of the type II cochlear afferents in the inner ear. The SfN
annual meeting has a very broad coverage of various fields in neuroscience research. It is my
first meeting that allowed me to interact with people outside of my field. During my poster
presentation, I enjoyed the discussion with many visitors. Some of them came from distinct
research background and were able to give comments from a different angle, raising new
questions and possibilities. Others were scientists from related fields and it is always exciting to
talk with them and share our up-to-date findings and discoveries.
The Society of Neuroscience by now is the largest the organization of researchers in the
neuroscience field. Every year, scientists and physicians from all over the world come and join
the SfN annual meeting and share their scientific findings and innovative techniques with the
community. This year’s attendance has reached over 30,000. More than 15,000 presentations
of various topics are divided into different rooms and meeting halls. The attendees are free to
find the themes they are interested in and join the small meetings. Given so many talks happen
at the same time, it could be challenging to plan for them. However, the mobile app launched
by SfN is a helpful tool. With all the meeting information and abstracts available, I found it much
easier to search interesting topics on the mobile device and build my own schedule.
This year’s SfN had a great emphasis on the topic of brain circuit mapping. The Presidential
Special Lectures featured four comprehensive talks about the advances in understanding
the ‘connectome’, i.e. the neuronal connection map in the brain. These four one-hour
presentations introduced the current endeavor in mapping the brain of classical model
organisms including C. elegans, drosophila, mouse and monkey. There were also symposiums
with shorter talks and each of them targeted at a specific field. These meetings gave more
opportunity for a detailed discussion. Visiting the posters can be a fun part of the meeting,
because you could talk with people not only doing similar research, but also those in related or
even different fields. Besides scientific talks, SfN also organized 34 professional development
workshops, where experts from both academia and industry came and discussed with students
and postdocs about career choices and their experience. During the evenings, attendees went to
a great number of social events, meeting old friends and searching for new opportunities.
Thanks to the support from GSA travel award, I attended this year’s Society for Neuroscience
(SfN) annual meeting on November 9-13, and had a great trip in San Diego. As a graduate
student of the Neuroscience program, I have been working on the auditory system for two
years, trying to unveil the function of the type II cochlear afferents in the inner ear. The SfN
annual meeting has a very broad coverage of various fields in neuroscience research. It is my
first meeting that allowed me to interact with people outside of my field. During my poster
presentation, I enjoyed the discussion with many visitors. Some of them came from distinct
research background and were able to give comments from a different angle, raising new
questions and possibilities. Others were scientists from related fields and it is always exciting to
talk with them and share our up-to-date findings and discoveries.
The Society of Neuroscience by now is the largest the organization of researchers in the
neuroscience field. Every year, scientists and physicians from all over the world come and join
the SfN annual meeting and share their scientific findings and innovative techniques with the
community. This year’s attendance has reached over 30,000. More than 15,000 presentations
of various topics are divided into different rooms and meeting halls. The attendees are free to
find the themes they are interested in and join the small meetings. Given so many talks happen
at the same time, it could be challenging to plan for them. However, the mobile app launched
by SfN is a helpful tool. With all the meeting information and abstracts available, I found it much
easier to search interesting topics on the mobile device and build my own schedule.
This year’s SfN had a great emphasis on the topic of brain circuit mapping. The Presidential
Special Lectures featured four comprehensive talks about the advances in understanding
the ‘connectome’, i.e. the neuronal connection map in the brain. These four one-hour
presentations introduced the current endeavor in mapping the brain of classical model
organisms including C. elegans, drosophila, mouse and monkey. There were also symposiums
with shorter talks and each of them targeted at a specific field. These meetings gave more
opportunity for a detailed discussion. Visiting the posters can be a fun part of the meeting,
because you could talk with people not only doing similar research, but also those in related or
even different fields. Besides scientific talks, SfN also organized 34 professional development
workshops, where experts from both academia and industry came and discussed with students
and postdocs about career choices and their experience. During the evenings, attendees went to
a great number of social events, meeting old friends and searching for new opportunities.