November 15, 2014

The Society for Neuroscience’s annual meeting will kick off Nov. 15 and run through Nov. 19 in Washington, D.C. Nicknamed Neuroscience 2014, the event is expected to draw in 30,000 researchers, scientists, industry leaders and curious attendees. There are a variety of lectures, symposia and exhibits at the event, giving labs, universities and researchers a chance to learn about and share one another’s work.

Whether you’re attending the 44th annual meeting or just following from home, you should know what to expect at Neuroscience 2014.

The basics of Neuroscience 2014

The Society for Neuroscience bills this meeting as the “largest neuroscience marketplace,” making it popular for many businesses to showcase new and innovative ideas and products. But it isn’t just a convention.

In addition to the more than 600 booths set up at Neuroscience 2014 for businesses, there are approximately 50 symposia and minisymposia. If you’re not excited for a symposium, check out the over 15,000 abstracts for new research and findings, the professional development workouts or some of the roughly 100 satellite events in the area. Whether you’re selling, buying, speaking or networking, there’s bound to be plenty to learn at this event.

Headlines before the event

There’s typically big news coming from Neuroscience 2014 during and following the meeting, but this annual event is already making a few headlines with awards that will be given.

• 2014 Science Education and Outreach Awards – On Nov. 7, the Society for Neuroscience announced who would be receiving the 2014 Science Education and Outreach Awards ahead of bestowing them the honors at the meeting. The three awards are given to people who educate the public about neuroscience and promote it as a field. One reason that this news made headlines before the meeting was that Scientific American writer Susana Martinez-Conde, Ph.D., was included as one of the recipients and wrote about the awards.
• Three MIT neuroscientists will receive awards – The Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience, which rewards models and methods in neuroscience, will be going to founder of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research Tomaso Poggio, Ph.D. Postdoctoral fellow of the Life Sciences Research Foundation at MIT, and Sung-Yon Kim, Ph.D., will get the Donald B. Lindsley Prize for his work on “neuroanatomical basis of anxiety behavior,” according to MIT news. Feng Zhang, Ph.D., is the third winner, receiving the Young Investigator Award along with Diana Bautista from the University of California at Berkeley.