CAN Connection – March 2024

Message from the President – Adriana Di Polo

Dear Colleagues

It is a pleasure to provide you with an update on CAN activities from the past months, and to invite you to participate in our upcoming events also.

First, I want to invite you to register for the CAN meeting today, as the early-bird deadline is March 15. Stephanie Fulton and Matt Hill, the program chairs and co-chairs have put together a great program, including a great roster of parallel symposia, proposed by you, our members. I thank you for participating in making this a success. The full program is available here: https://can-acn.org/meeting-2024/can2024-program/

Adriana Di Polo
CAN President
Adriana Di Polo

The CAN meeting local chair, Mark Cembrowski has worked hard to organize an exciting public lecture session, with speakers Leah Mayo, Catharine Winstanley and Matthew Hill on the very timely topic of “Cannabis and Psychedelics: Hype or hope for addictions, brain diseases, and mental health”. This will take place at Science World on Saturday, May 18.

A new highlight to the program will undoubtedly be the new Trainee Power Pitch session, which will take place 30 minutes before each main poster session. These are opportunities for 6 trainees in each session to provide a “power pitch” for their poster presentation, and for all attendees to see short and exciting presentations by trainees. I am looking forward to this!

CAN is also proud to announce that we have increased the value of travel awards to the CAN meeting and awarded a record number of awards for the 2024 meeting. This has been made possible by the very important sponsorship provided by the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) and the BrightFocus Foundation, which add to the funds provided by CAN to support trainee participation in our meeting. You can find the list of winners on our website.

I want to invite all meeting attendees with young children or other dependents to apply for the new trainee dependent care subsidies. These subsidies aim to make the CAN meeting more accessible to all by providing financial support to cover childcare or adult dependent care costs. Details of the program are available on the CAN meeting website.

I also am happy to announce we have a new co-chair of the CAN advocacy committee, Tabrez Siddiqui from the University of Manitoba. He joins Liisa Galea (CAMH) as co-chair of this very important committee. I take this opportunity to highlight the dedication of the previous co-chair of this committee, Karun Singh, who had led the advocacy team since 2019. The advocacy group does very important work to promote and advocate for increased funding for scientific research in Canada and CAN owes a big thank you to Karun for his leadership on many initiatives.

Wishing you all a great Springtime and hoping I will have the opportunity to welcome you at the CAN meeting in Vancouver.

Adriana Di Polo

President, Canadian Association for Neuroscience