The Neuroscience Graduate Student Association held its 4^th Annual Invited Speaker Lecture on Thursday, May 8, 2014 at 4pm in Butler Auditorium, 150 Farber Hall. The Association invited Dr. R. Douglas Fields, Chief of Nervous System Development and Plasticity Section, National Institute of Child Health and Development, National Institutes of Health. Dr. Fields met with graduate students for an informal lunch before giving his talk about activity-dependent plasticity and development, and he later joined the graduate students for dinner at Black Rock Restaurant. Dr. Fields has made a career of being an interdisciplinary neuroscientist with the National Institutes of Health, yet writes science books and articles for the general audience in his spare time. With the graduate students, he contrasted his experiences working in university and government and discussed how he made his way to success in work and in life.

The Neuroscience Graduate Student Association annual invited speaker for 2013 was Dr. Alison Barth, an associate professor in the department of biological sciences from Carnegie Mellon University.  Dr. Barth is an established scientist whose work focuses on neural activity and network connectivity in the sensory neocortex in mammals.  Her most recent accomplishment includes receiving the 2013 Memory and Cognitive Disorders Award from the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience – she was only one of four individuals in the country to receive this prestigious award.  During Dr. Barth’s visit to Buffalo, she met with faculty members and graduate students from the Neuroscience Program.  The graduate students joined Dr. Barth for lunch and dinner, giving the students an opportunity to interact with her and each other in a personal setting.  Dr. Barth gave a well-attended seminar presentation describing her current and upcoming research to a diverse audience from the school of medicine and biomedical sciences.  This event marks the 3rd speaker invited and hosted by the Neuroscience graduate student body.

The announcement for the event and an abstract of Dr. Barth’s research can be found here.