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The Canadian Association for Neuroscience is proud to announce Dr. Mark Cembrowski will be awarded the 2025 Canadian Association of Neuroscience (CAN) New Investigator Award. Dr. Cembrowski has established himself as an outstanding scientist, collaborator, and mentor, conducting leading-edge research on the cellular and molecular underpinnings of cognition and brain disorders, particularly in memory.
The Brain Prize is currently the world’s largest prize for neuroscience and is awarded each year by the Lundbeck Foundation. The Brain Prize is awarded to one or more individuals who have distinguished themselves by making outstanding contributions in any area of neuroscience- from basic to clinical, and since it was first awarded in 2011 The Brain Prize has recognised 47 scientists from 10 different countries. You can find out more about The Brain Prize here.
Continue readingThe Canadian Association for Neuroscience (CAN) and the Canadian Institutes of Health’s Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction (CIHR-INMHA) are proud to announce the winners of the 2023 Brain Star Awards.
The CIHR-INMHA Brain Star awards, administered by the Canadian Association for Neuroscience, are awarded to students and trainees who have published high impact discoveries in all fields and disciplines covered by CIHR’s Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction in the 2023 calendar year.
The top 3 Brain Star Award winners of the year have been invited to make a presentation at the CAN meeting in May.
The Canadian Association for Neuroscience is very proud to announce that Dr. Caroline Ménard from Université Laval is the winner of the 2024 CAN New Investigator Award. Her innovative research program is shedding light on the biological mechanisms underlying vulnerability and resilience to stress, with the help of state-of-the-art photonic technology and with the aim of developing pioneer strategies to treat or prevent depression.
The Canadian Association for Neuroscience is very proud to present Dr. Arkady Khoutorsky, Associate Professor in the Department of Anesthesia and Faculty of Dental Medicine and Oral Health Sciences at McGill University, and Dr. Bratislav Misic, leader of the Network Neuroscience Lab at the Montreal Neurological Institute 2023 CAN New Investigator awards.
Dr. Arkady Khoutorsky is making disruptive contributions in two key areas of neuroscience: translational control in neurological disorders and chronic pain, and his work in both areas is bringing forward new concepts for developing novel types of therapeutic interventions. Read his full profile here: Arkady Khoutorsky wins a 2023 CAN New Investigator award for pioneering research on chronic pain and neurological disorders.
Dr. Bratislav Misic studies how cognition and behaviour emerge from the links and interactions among brain areas. His innovative work, integrating in vivo neuroimaging, statistical learning and network science, is profoundly transforming the field’s understanding of multi-scale structure-function relationships in the brain. Read his full profile here: Bratislav Misic wins a CAN 2023 New Investigator Award for ground-breaking work on brain networks
The Canadian Association for Neuroscience (CAN) and the Canadian Institutes of Health’s Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction (CIHR-INMHA) are proud to announce the winners of the 2021 Brain Star Awards.
The CIHR-INMHA Brain Star awards, administered for 2021 by the Canadian Association for Neuroscience, are awarded to students and trainees who have published high impact discoveries in all fields and disciplines covered by CIHR’s Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction in the 2021 calendar year.
The top 3 Brain Star Award winners of the year have been invited to make a presentation at the CAN meeting in May.
The Canadian Association for Neuroscience is extremely proud to present Dr. Boris Bernhardt, Assistant Professor in Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University, with the 2022 CAN New Investigator Award. Dr. Boris Bernhardt is a Tier-2 Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroinformatics and leads the multimodal imaging and connectome analysis laboratory (http://mica-mni.github.io) at the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre (BIC) of the Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital (The Neuro).
Dr. Boris Bernhardt is recognized internationally for his research that seeks to better understand human brain organization, brain development, and neural mechanisms of human cognition across different spatial and temporal scales. His research integrates cutting edge in vivo neuroimaging, network science, histology, and transcriptomics approaches. He is one of the pioneers of an emerging system neuroscience field to study large-scale gradients – spatially organized patterns of brain microarchitecture, connectivity, and function– and to examine their role in human cognition. His research has contributed to the growing understanding of how multiscale network anomalies contribute to atypical brain function and cognitive difficulties in common conditions, notably in epilepsy and autism.
CAN is proud to support the development of the Montreal Neurological Institute Open Outreach Program
Description of initiative
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s ‘Calls to Action’ #6-12 relate to removing barriers in education for Aboriginal youth and eliminating educational gaps between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians. With this application, we propose to create the ‘TOSI Open Outreach Program’, a neuroscience-specific outreach program run out of the Montreal Neurological Institute. Its goal will be to engage with youth in remote northern communities and expose them to neuroscience education and research, with the long-term goal of attracting Indigenous students from such communities to enter neuroscience-related programs at the university level. The ‘TOSI Open Outreach Program’ would be led by a Principal Investigator based at the Montreal Neurological Institute – selected by the TOSI Grassroots Committee – who will partner with other McGill-, Quebec- and Canada-based groups, such as BrainReach North, McGill Indigenous Initiatives, and the Canadian Association for Neuroscience, to develop a Quebec-based strategy to increase neuroscience-related outreach activities in remote northern communities, and to ensure that such activities are designed in partnership with Indigenous leaders and communities to maximize impact and ensure sustainability. One of the current limitations in similar outreach initiatives is the difficulty in establishing local community contacts and maintaining previously established community contacts – thus a central thrust of this proposal is to establish and strengthen community connections to enable a sustainable outreach program. Finally, once the ‘TOSI Open Outreach Program’ is well established in remote northern communities, its scope could be expanded to provide outreach to other traditionally under-served communities.
Target audience / Outreach potential
Youth in remote northern communities in Quebec.
Main objective of event
The goals of this proposal are:
– Establishing the ‘TOSI Open Outreach Program’ at the Neuro, which would include:
– Formalizing the ‘Open Outreach Program’ within TOSI
– Defining a mandate for the ‘TOSI Open Outreach Program’
– Selecting a Chair to head the program
– Establishing a web presence on the Neuro website
Formalizing partnerships with stakeholders, including (but not limited to):
Developing an action plan that encompasses:
Organizer(s)
– Dr. Stuart Trenholm (McGill, Montreal Neurological Institute)
– Dr. Arjun Krishnaswamy (McGill, Department of Physiology, yIBRO)
Scientific excellence / impact
We believe that this initiative will fill an important gap in current outreach activities targeted towards remote northern communities by focusing on establishing sustainable community connections, and we think that such an initiative would be a great boost for increasing EDI in neuroscience exposure and training in Canada for a historically under-served community.
Equity / Diversity / Inclusion
The proposed Open Outreach Program is an outreach event exclusively targeted at increasing neuroscience-related engagement with remote northern (largely Indigenous) communities in Quebec. Thus this proposal is a grassroots initiative to increase EDI in neuroscience training and exposure, with the long-term goal of increasing the number of Indigenous people who enter the field of neuroscience.
CAN is proud to support the “Who can become a scientist?” workshop
Description of event
Who can become a scientist? is a workshop for a high school age audience. The workshop is approximately 1.5 hours and is currently in a virtual format. The program is led by a team of dedicated undergraduate and graduate volunteers, and pairs module-based education about equity diversity and inclusion issues in science along with audience-participation activities. The workshop begins with a ~25 min interactive introduction, that includes participants being asked to participate in a poll regarding their career interests and to draw or write a description of a scientist (not for sharing with the group just for their own reference). This is followed by a number of self and pair/small group reflection-type questions and then leads into 3 optional modules, titled:
Target audience / Outreach potential
The target audience is high school age students, but could be adapted to broaden the scope. We expect to reach between 50 and 200 high school age students in this first year.
Main objective of event
To promote the awareness and importance of equity, diversity, and inclusion in science.
Organizer(s)
The idea for the workshop was sparked by a discussion about equity, diversity and inclusion amongst members of the Swayne lab at the University of Victoria. Over the past year, the workshop has been developed by a collaborative group including members the Swayne lab, University of Victoria faculty members, and students at the University of Victoria together with the local chapter of Let’s Talk Science, with input and feedback from the University of Victoria Office of Equity and Human Rights.
Developers & Organizers:
Leigh Anne Swayne
Rebecca Candlish
Juan Sanchez-Arias
Emma van der Slagt
Afnan Juma
Dzifa Dordunoo
Jane Gair
Moussa Magassa
Elisa Gonçalves de Andrade
Simone St. Louis Anderson
Melissa Mills
Hannah Richards
Crystal Washington
The Canadian Association for Neuroscience (CAN) and the Canadian Institutes of Health’s Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction (CIHR-INMHA) are proud to announce the winners of the 2020 Brain Star Awards.