The semester is now in full swim and we have exciting plans for the coming academic year. Based on a series of faculty forums held last year, we identified neuroscience and women’s health and well-being as a major strength at UMass. We will use this theme as the focus of the Interdisciplinary Neurosciences Conference to be held in the spring of 2023.

This summer, I attended my first off campus in-person conference since the start of the pandemic. It was so much more rewarding to be in an audience of real people instead of staring at a screen. I got to meet people and make new contacts. One of those contacts, will be our next IONs Distinguished Lecture, Dr. Venessa Ruta from the Rockefeller University. She examines the neural basis of complex behaviors of the fruit fly. On November 9th, we will hold a Neuroscience poster preview session in conjunction with her talk. This will be your opportunity to practice presenting your poster for the Society for Neuroscience Conference or to see the amazing work that will presented at this conference without having to travel to San Diego.

This semester there is a great lineup of talks in the Neuroscience and Behavior Graduate program seminar series including NSB student talks. So, get out and go see a research talk in person.