Nipissing celebrating 40 years of neuroscience
If you love brains, Nipissing University is the place to be this week. Neuroscientists are heading to North Bay this week for a three-day conference, Celebrating 40 Years of Neuroscience at Nipissing University. The conference runs July 27 – 29 at Nipissing University. It features 25 individual presentations, with 15 coming from Nipissing graduates who worked in the university’s Neuroscience laboratory as students. A total of eight current Nipissing faculty members are also presenting papers. All talks scheduled on campus will take place in the Vittori Fedeli Business Centre (room F210).
Dr. Jeff Kleim, who graduated Nipissing in 1992 and is currently an associate professor at Arizona State University, will deliver the Keynote lecture on Saturday morning at 9 a.m. Dr. Kleim’s keynote lecture is titled, Neural Plasticity and Stroke: Encouraging the Brain to Change Through Neurorehabilitation.
A selection of scheduled presentations demonstrate the breadth of the presentations. Some featured presentations include: Social Neuroendocrinology of Human Aggression; (I Can't Get No) Inhibition: When Survival Depends on ?-Protocadherins; The Brain Behind the Behaviour: Translating the Neurosequential Model of Brain Development into Practice; Brain Imaging Evidence for Altered Mentalizing in Social Phobia; Your Brain on Public Health; Examining Sex Differences in Visual-Motor Control; THC and Chronic Stress During Adolescence Alters Behaviour and Synapses in Adult Rats; and Modeling Human Learning to Inform Machine Learning.
“I took a first-year Psychology course with Dr. Matti Saari and he roped me into his lab,” recalls Dr. Kleim. “I worked in the lab every year. Matti gave me the research bug, he showed me his work and I was hooked. The idea of doing research, of discovering something new, of answering questions that no one knew how to answer, was very exciting. I’m really looking forward to reconnecting with people, meeting some of the new faculty and graduates and hearing some amazing presentations this weekend.”
The conference is open to the public and free of charge. It kicks off on Thursday morning with a welcome at 8:30 a.m. followed by sessions running from 9 a.m. – 3:45 p.m. Thursday evening will see five neuroscience researchers giving short, five-minute presentations about how the world might be changed by their research in the next 25 years.
Here is the lineup of speakers, and the title of their talk:
- Dr. Jeff Kleim: Engineering New Brains
- Dr. Phil Nickerson: The future of stem cell therapy in the eye
- Dr. Andrew Weeks: Nice to meet you, can I see your connectome?
- Dr. Michael Jones: Why industry cares about modeling your brain and how it works
- Dr. Justin Carré: Sex hormones and behaviour: the future
The conference continues on Friday, from 9 a.m. – 3:15 p.m. Saturday’s proceedings run from 9 a.m. – 2:15 p.m.