Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting 2010
From November 13th – 17th, San Diego was host to this year's annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. The number of participants reached a new record with more than 31,500 scientists.
In order to take advantage of synergy effects, the Research in Germany booth was situated close to other German exhibitors (e.g. German Graduate Schools for Neuroscience and the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience). The booth was staffed by the American Friends of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, DAAD, DFG and the German Center for Research and Innovation.
The booth attracted almost 400 scientists. Over half of the visitors expressed interest in the organizations' post-doc programs. The main funding programs highlighted were DFG's "Temporary Positions for Principal Investigators" and Alexander von Humboldt's Sofja Kovlevskaja Award and the Humboldt Research Fellowship for Postdoctoral Researchers. Further enquiries were usually for shorter research stays over the summer (DAAD's RISE and RISE Professional), PhD programs, visiting professorships or funding for international research collaboration.
Due to financial cutbacks in science and research in many countries and Germany's increasing investment in university and non-university research, more German scientists wanted to learn about funding opportunities for returnees. These visitors were very interested in DAAD's funding program to reclaim German scientists abroad that would help them to re-establish contacts to the German research community.
Traditionally during the Neuroscience Meeting, the Monday evening is reserved for the Germany Social, which this year was hosted by DFG and Germany's Society for Neuroscience (Neurowissenschaftliche Gesellschaft – NWG). Dr. Max Voegler, Director of DFG's North America office, and Dr. Sigrun Korsching, President of NWG, welcomed some 120 guests who learned about career opportunities in Germany during the subsequent panel discussion. Dr. Britta Maedge, DFG, moderated a panel consisting of young German neuroscientists: Dr. Bjoern Brembs, FU Berlin, Dr. Hauke Heekeren, FU Berlin and Dr. Marc Spehr, RWTH Aachen, talked about their career paths and were able to give the audience advice on funding programs and career opportunities in Germany. The guests lingered at the reception, networking and addressing questions in greater depth that had come up during the panel discussion. (Cl)
