2008Councilreports

The 7th edition of the Basic Neurochemistry text continues to perform well with a total of approximately 5700 copies sold to date, although the rate of sales has begun to taper off. Preparations for the next edition are underway with tentative plans for release in 2011.

Committee for the Advancement and Encouragement of Neurochemistry in Latin America (CAENLA)

Juana Pasquini (Chair)

jpasquin@qb.ffyb.uba.ar

This year CAENLA consisted of 5 (five) members: Dr. Juana M. Pasquini (Chair; University of Buenos Aires Argentina), Dr. Robin Miskimins (University of South Dakota, Vermillion SD USA), Dr. Marta Antonelli (CONICET Argentina), Dr. Guillermina Almazan (McGill, Canada) and Dr. Mike Collins (Loyola Univ. IL USA).

It was just in August 2007 when I was appointed by Dr. Monica Carson to chair this Committee. The major function of the committee during 2007 has been the selection of the Young Latin American Scholars. As in previous years, the availability of this award was announced in the ASN newsletter, the ASN website, the ASN meeting program and in different scientific societies throughout Latin America. The applications were distributed among the committee members who ranked them based on the following criteria: a) the applicant´s qualifications and interest in neuroscience, b) the quality and commitment of the host laboratory ; c) the benefit of visiting a US laboratory for the applicant´s scientific career, and d) the recommendation letter attached to the application. Scoring sheets were returned were returned to the committee chair who averaged the scores from the reviewers. The awardees are Romina Uranga (doctoral fellow from Bahia Blanca Argentina, host lab. Dr.Miller), María Celeste Leal (doctoral fellow from Institute Leloir Buenos Aires Argentina, host lab Dr. Farris) and Lucas Silvestroff (doctoral fellow from the University of Buenos Aires Buenos Aires Argentina host lab Dr. Patrizia Casaccia-Bonnefil). The awardees were notified by email and later with a formal letter from the ASN Secretary. The Committee has different plans for the next year such as inviting research laboratories from US to offer positions and to support the YLAS during her/his stay.

Historian’s Report

George H. DeVries

George.Devries@va.gov

Since my appointment I have been assessing the state of the history of the ASN which in itself has a history as follows. Claude Baxter has been the only other ASN Historian since the founding of the society in 1970. He has gathered all the relevant historical documents of the society (abstract volumes, minutes of ASN council meetings etc). They are currently in storage at UCLA. Due to health problems, Claude resigned his position as historian in 2004 and I was appointed as historian in 2006 by Wendy Macklin and the ASN council. There are a number of issues to be addressed by the ASN historian in the coming year:

Issue:

There are no guidelines for the ASN Historian. What materials are to be collected? Does the historian attend council meetings? What is the term of the ASN Historian?

Resolution:

I will write suggested ASN historian guidelines for consideration by council in the coming year. I will suggest that the Historian appointment be for a term of 5 years. I will also suggest that there be at least 2 other members of a ASN History Committee with staggered terms. One of the other members will be the ASN. Historian-elect who will overlap the current ASN historian’s term by at least 2 years. Members if the committee will assist the ASN historian in gathering and cataloging historical materials. Currently there is a 38 year backlog of organizing to do, a job too big for one person! This committee will also be charged with organizing ASN history workshops, similar to the one being presented this year, to raise awareness of the ASN history. Council has authorized a trip for the ASN Historian to go to the UCLA campus and assess the archive situation so that a more permanent solution can be found. This trip will take place this spring and I will inform council as to the situation of the archives. Based on what I find, I will propose a solution to finding a permanent repository for the archives where they can be organized and displayed. This will make these valuable historical documents accessible to both ASN members and historians.

Issue:

The history portion of the ASN website needs to be updated.

Solution:

I am currently working to correct this situation. In particular the history of the standing rules needs to be updated, a short biographical sketch and picture of Marion Kies needs to be incorporated. I would also suggest that the following individuals, who played pivotal roles in the ASN, be included on the web site history section:

1. Bernard Haber 3. Lloyd Horrocks

2. Steve Pffeiffer 4. Pierre Morell

I also welcome other suggestions from council, as well as formulation of a policy to guide selection of members to be included in this section of the website. I would also suggest that the society consider collecting a “Living History” by authorizing a historical videotaping of society members who have been active in ASN and made contributions to both ASN and neurochemistry.

Intersociety Liaison Report
Mary C. McKenna

mmckenna@umaryland.edu

ISN-ASN Joint Meeting in Cancun in 2007: The ISN and ASN officers worked together very effectively to deal with the issue of cancelling the meeting in Cancun.

ISN CAEN Committee: The YIEE applicants for ASN 2008 meeting who had been given travel awards for the Cancun meeting were given awards for the 2008 ASN meeting in San Antonio. The CAEN committee supported 3 Young Latin American Scholars and the 5 YIEE runners up. This support from ISN is an important contribution to the ASN meeting since it enables more young people to attend the meeting.

ISN Council Meeting in London October 16-17, 2007: 3 items from this meeting are of crucial interest to the members of ASN – Please see full report for details.

The cost of the evacuation of 200 people from Cancun to the site of the ISN Advanced School in Valladolid was ~$60,000, and was covered by the ISN. President Roger Butterworth thanked all organizers in general, the programme committee chair and members, speakers, session chairs and attendees. The ASN should formally thank the ISN for evacuating the meeting attendees.
There have been difficulties in getting people to run for ISN Council. Current ISN president Agustina Garcia noted the need to be proactive in identifying potential candidates for ISN council and offices. Currently David Shine is ISN Treasurer and Wendy Macklin is newly elected to council. Since the 12 ISN council members are geographically distributed, at least 1 person from the ASN should run for ISN council in the next election. The ASN needs to be proactive in identifying people to run.
The ISN has funds from revenues from the Journal of Neurochemistry. It was unanimously decided by the ISN Council that ISN will allocate $25,000 per annum to be used at meetings of the sister societies.
This money should be available immediately (ASN meeting in San Antonio, March 2008). Use of the money would be flexible and should include initiatives directed towards activities for younger neurochemists including travel funds for students and postdocs (<10 years from PhD/MD), Young Investigator sessions, Plenary lecturers, Specific sessions, and free registrations for people from financially disadvantaged countries. These sessions should all be advertised as ISN sponsored events. This is an extremely important initiative on the part of the ISN that will have a very positive impact on the sister societies. The ASN should formally thank ISN for this initiative and use the $25000 for this meeting.

The 2009 meeting of the ISN will be held in Busan, Korea and Athens Greece was selected as the site of the 2011 meeting.

ISN Travel Award Committee

Ursula Sonnewald, Chairperson Travel Committee

Susan McGuire, Travel Committee

Applications for travel awards to attend the 2007 ISN/ASN Joint meeting in Cancun were submitted by e-mail to an ASN email account set up by ISN Treasurer, David Shine. A total of 243 applications were received by the February 28, 2007 deadline. This total represents a significant increase from 2001 (166) and 2003 (203). Applications were processed into a single spreadsheet and distributed to all committee members. Comments and rankings were welcomed from each committee member and received from the following committee members: Ursula Sonnewald, Chairperson, Norway; Julio Morán Andrade, Mexico; Yukio Yoneda, Japan; Gianfrancesco Goracci, Italy; Susan McGuire, USA; and David Shine, USA, ex officio.

Applications were evaluated based largely on the selection criteria previously established by ISN and the following instructions were distributed to committee members:

Please make your scoring using only whole numbers: 1=high priority; 2=medium priority; 3=lowest priority

Priority will be given to persons who have not received support previously and who do not hold a permanent senior position. Preference will be given to younger investigators (less than 8 years from award of first doctoral degree). Specifically, i) No previous support from ISN; ii) Young investigator or senior PhD student; iii) First author abstract submission; iv) No permanent senior positions considered. Within priority i) less than 8 years from award of the first doctoral degree is preferred. Greater priority is given to 0-4 years postdoctoral and senior PhD students over 5-8 years postdoctoral.

Of the 170 awards offered, 168 have formally accepted and two who have accepted have subsequently withdrawn for personal reasons. Thus far, the $170,000 budget has been set-aside as follows: 168 Travel Awards totaling $162,000 USD with the additional $8,000 USD set aside for emergencies. Travel applicants were awarded across the following geographical distribution: North America, 69; South America, 28; Europe 57; Pacific Region, Middle East, Africa, 14. The following total standard amounts, in US Dollars, were used across the geographical regions: North America, $620; South America, $920; Europe, $1220; Africa, Middle East, Pacific Region: $1520. Arrangements were made with the Local Host Committee to allow awardees to register at the student rate of $220 as part of their total award package. Awardees will receive a check from ISN Treasurer, David H. Shine, for the balance of their awards (total award less $220 for registration) at the meeting and will be required to show photo identification in order to pick up their award checks. All checks will be made out in US Dollars. In such cases where the awardees prepaid their own registration fees, they will be asked to provide full documentation (Paypal and Credit Card Statements, Bank Draft Notification) so that the registration fee can be refunded.

Applicants were notified about the award decisions before the deadline for abstract submission.

Jordi Folch-Pi Award Committee

Eric Murphy

emurphy@medicine.nodak.edu

The Jordi Folch-Pi Award Committee is pleased to announce that Dr. Tiina Kauppinen from the University of California, San Francisco is the 2008 recipient of the Jordi Folch-Pi memorial award. Dr. Kauppinen’s research centers on the role of specific molecular signaling and effector pathways in microglial activation and their downstream impact on brain inflammatory response. Her current focus is on the role of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase-1 (PARP-1) as a common pathway involved in neuroinflammation, neurodegeneration, and neurogenesis. Her long-term goal is elucidate the mechanism underlying neuroinflammation and the role that these processes have in CNS ischemic injury and disease. Dr. Kauppinen has been very successful in her research endeavors and has published her work in outstanding Tier I journals. The Committee has no doubt that she will continue to make outstanding contributions to the field and look forward to seeing her career continue to prosper and flourish.

Marian Kies Award Committee

G. Jean Harry and Regina Armstrong (Co-Chairs)

rarmstrong@usuhs.edu

New committee chairs were appointed in November 2007. At that time, the previous chair related that no applications had been received by the original deadline that corresponded with the original abstract deadline for the annual meeting. The deadline for submission of nominations was extended until January 31 to correspond with the deadline for the submission of abstracts for the late breaking submission mechanism. The committee received four nominations. Application packages were reviewed by the committee members with the decision sent to the ASN President on February 15. The quantity of the applicant pool was relatively small, yet the quality of applications received was extremely high. Dr. Birgit Fogal was selected as the 2008 awardee. She was notified of the selection by Dr. Monica Carson, both by email and by hardcopy, on February 15.

The Standing Rules state that the award winner should be notified one month in advance of the annual meeting, which was not possible in this case. In the future, the committee expects to be assembled well in advance of the deadline for nominations and abstract submission. Two committee members are rotating off and in need of replacement appointments. The committee will need to broadly solicit nominations to ensure applications of high quality and sufficient quantity are received so that the award continues to be a well respected honor, and a means to bring young leadership into the ASN.

Membership Committee

James Connor (Chair)

jrc3@psu.edu

The activity of the membership committee this past year was limited to review of applications for membership. A total of 38 applications were reviewed and 32 were submitted to council with a recommendation for approval. Of the 32 applicants for whom approval was recommended, 11 were student members and the rest were ordinary members.

The Following individuals received approval as new members of the ASN since September 2007.

Laura Ballerini	Izumi Maezawa	Jin Xie
Maria Irene Givogri	Xiaoqiao Xie	Hongling Zhu
Ernesto Bongarzone	Jalabi Walid	Pichili Vijaya-Bhaskar Reddy
Charles Howe	Bor-Kai Hsiung
Miki Furusho	Ram Sripad	Steven Bender
Kevin Beck	Inderjeet Saluja	Htay
Adam White	Jennifer Apodaca	Heather Arnett
Daniel Dlaboga	Miriam Susana Domowicz	Jennifer Tobin
Gina Lungu	Jianrong Li	Cunningham, Rebecca Lynn
Gregory Bix	Izumi Maezawa	Ram, Sripa
Carlos Pedraza	Xiaoqiao Xie	Saluja, Inderjeet
Rebecca Lynn Cunningham	Jalabi Walid	Apodaca, Jennifer, J
Lee-Way Jin	Bor-Kai Hsiung	Li, Jianrong
Tamara Blutstein	Hongling Zh	Xie, Jin
Pitt, David	Wei Wang	Hahn, Yun Kyung

President’s Report

Monica Carson (President)

Program Committee (2008)

Terri Wood (Chair)

Woodte@UMDNJ.edu

The 39th annual ASN meeting had some very specific challenges, one of which was coming off of the cancelled ISN/ASN joint meeting in Cancun. The other was the relative paucity of ASN members in San Antonio and the lack of a pre-appointed local host committee prior to approving the site. That said, Jim Roberts deserves our sincere thanks for stepping into this role, for his efforts to marshal the San Antonio neuroscientists to attend our meeting and for his efforts to work with the local Parkinson’s Disease Foundation to formulate and advertise the public outreach session.

The 2008 program committee was very large and scientifically diverse in an effort to have the diverse research interests of the ASN membership represented. As has been done in the past, the program committee was divided into 4 subcommittees representing the 4 major themes of the ASN annual meeting (Building the Nervous System; Glial Mechanisms and Injury; Metabolism and Cell and Molecular Neurobiology; and Neurodegeneration and Disease). The format of the 39th annual ASN meeting was modeled on that of the 37th annual meeting. A total of 28 sessions were selected from 41 submitted proposals (8 symposia, 17 colloquia and 3 workshops). An additional fourth workshop was added on alternative scientific careers.

Abstract submissions for 2008 were submitted entirely online. Once again we used the online abstract submission system that Christian Schmitz designed for the 2005 ASN meeting. The Program Chair extends substantial gratitude to Christian for being on-call at all hours of the night and early morning for help. This year, Christian added a mechanism to generate the author index for the abstract book in addition to the keyword index. One problem arose with the registration site for international registrants caused by the need for a zip code which blocked registrants from gaining access to the abstract website. This will need to be fixed prior to next year’s meeting registration. Another issue that should be addressed is how to allow someone who has already registered to submit additional abstracts (possibly by entering a registration number).

Poster presentations were displayed for two days to allow for sufficient discussion. One innovation implemented in 2006, the submission of late breaking abstracts, was continued. Late-breaking abstract submissions were open until 4 weeks before the final meeting. 17 late-breaking abstracts were received and were divided into a poster session and an oral presentation session (6 late breaking oral presentations). One innovation implemented this year was to allow 2 postdoctoral fellows that had been active in previous ASN meetings to serve as the session chairs of the late breaking oral session. These two postdocs worked with the program chair to select the abstracts to be presented orally.

The 2008 pre-meeting workshop was organized by Vlad Parpura, Bruce Ransom and Monica Carson. The topic was “Glial-Neuronal interactions: Cutting Edge Approaches to Modeling CNS Function and Disease”.

Finally, I wish to thank the 2008 program committee for their outstanding and numerous efforts in soliciting outstanding session proposals, in generating a scientifically balanced program and in publicizing the meeting!

Public Policy and Education Committee

Sandra Hewett, Chair

shewett@neuron.uchc.edu

This committee has two major tasks: 1) to organize a forum to educate the lay public about a subject of medical/scientific interest and 2) to publicize the Society to the scientific community.

Current committee members are Sandra Hewett (Chair, 2006-2010), Mike Aschner (2004-2008), Rashmi Bansal (2004-2008), Monica Carson (2006-2010), Vittorio Gallo, (2006-2010), Jean Harry, (2006-2010) and Tammy Kielian, (2006-2010). Two member’s terms expire this year (Drs. Bansal and Aschner). Nominations to replace them will be made in consultation with Dr. Monica Carson, the current President, at the 2008 meeting in San Antonio.

Because last year (2007) was the joint meeting between ISN and ASN in Cancun, there was no public forum planned. The Public Policy and Education Committee was scheduled to meet in Cancun. However, since the main meeting was canceled, our committee meeting did not take place. Given this, Sandra Hewett, Terri Wood (the 2008 Program Committee Chair), and Monica Carson (past chair of the Public Policy and Education committee) worked with James L Roberts, Ph.D. (chair of the local host committee) on this years public forum, the topic of which will be Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Robert’s worked with his local APDA (American Parkinson’s Disease Association) to publicize the meeting (via internet as well as snail-mail mailing). The public outreach meeting will be held Saturday March 1st from 4:30-6:30pm. Dr. Arnold B. Vardiman is slated to discuss neurosurgical approaches to PD treatment. Drs. Randy Strong and Syam Imam will discuss new research avenues

The Public Policy and Education Committee will have a luncheon meeting in San Antonio on Tuesday March 4th. The focus of the discussion will center on the development of the public outreach programs for the next two meetings. Ideas to renew efforts to publicize the ASN meeting will also be solicited.

Secretary’s report

Steve Levison, Secretary

Levison@asneurochem.org

ASN Website

Working with Ed Cross at Stassines Advertising, we worked to create a new website for the ASN. Our goal was to create a website that was easy to navigate, would provide useful content and services for our members and that was dynamic. This new website has a number of new features including scroll menus, new headings and a local google search function. I also have worked to add new content to the web-site. In particular, I have almost completed creating web pages for all of the Marian Kies recipients (16 pages), and have created 17 Folch-Pi recipient pages. Emails have been sent to the remaining recipients to request content. I have also endeavored to update the Home page at least once every few weeks with the latest news for our members. Last but not least I have added an obituary section to the web-site.

I have worked with Ed and Sheilah to add the ASN store to our website, which enables our members to register for our meeting, pay their dues and make contributions to Society funds on the web, thus facilitating financial transactions. We are also working to add keywords to our membership database so that individuals with specific research interests can be easily identified for programmatic needs.

I also worked with the program chair to provide updates to the website for the 39th annual meeting.

Email Announcements

The Society continues to rely on sporadic email announcements to alert the membership about important deadlines and other issues. Ed Cross will be creating a listserve, so that our emails will be controlled by the ASN office. We thank David Shine for operating a list-serve for the Society to date.

Standing Rules Committee

Cara-Lynne Schengrund - Chair; 2004-2008

cschengrund@psu.edu

Just two questions came up regarding the Standing Rules and/or By-Laws. The first dealt with the question of when the newly elected officers should take office when the scheduled annual meeting of the ASN was cancelled due to the possibility of a category 5 hurricane. That question was resolved by having the newly elected officers take office as scheduled and having both old and new officers invited to participate at the next Council meeting (held during the annual Neuroscience meeting). The second question the came up related to the dues paid by student members. Historically, the membership voted to change the By-Laws to eliminate the category of student membership because they were finding that the students did not apply to become ordinary members, ad pay the higher dues, even though they had been out of school for a number of years. The hard copy of the By-Laws that I had from 2004 only listed 3 categories of membership. Because students do not earn much it was decided to change the Standing Rules to allow students to pay $30, post-docs, $50, and regular members of the ASN $125. Emeritus members would pay nothing (change should have appeared in the 2005 version of the Standing Rules and By-Laws). Dues are not listed in the By-Laws so that they can be changed as needed without going through the hassle of revising the By-Laws each time you want to change the dues (believe Robert's Rules recommends this also).

Treasurer’s Report

Jean Merrill (Treasurer)

jean.merrill@aventis.com

The Treasurer’s activities for 2007 have included signing the contract for the 2010 ASN Meeting in Santa Fe, submission of tax information to the accountant and finished forms to the IRS, and participation in discussions involving financials with the Executive Committee. Because we have been gearing up for the San Antonio meeting, our coffers are full and 2007 showed a rebound into the profit area. A seven year analysis of profit and loss shows an overall decrease in assets of approximately $70,000 since 2001. An effort needs to be made to increase the dues paid by members as currently we take in only about half the dues owed to the Society based on membership. Download PDF of Treasurer's report presented at the Business Meeting.

Young Investigator Education Enhancement Committee

Susan O. McGuire (ASN YIEE Committee Chairperson)

smcguire@lumc.edu

This year the YIEE Committee consisted of 4 members: Susan O McGuire, Loyola University Medical Center, Maywood, IL; Babette Fuss, Mary McKenna, and Gary Landreth. Specific instructions for completing the application were given online on the ASN website. A special online application was set up including the applicant’s contact information, school information and abstract. Further, applicants were to submit, in pdf form, a personal statement, a letter of recommendation from their advisor specifically stating financial need and an NIH style CV.

Each application was scored first on whether it met the criteria listed on the website and then each application was scored separately by each committee member based on the quality of the: 1) abstract, 2) applicant’s letter, 3) CV, 4) recommendation of the advisor, and 5) the need for exposure to the scientific community. Scores of the reviewers were totaled and the candidates were rank ordered. The top 20 applications received YIEE award of $500 each to help with the cost of travel to the meeting. ISN graciously provided 5 additional awards of $400 each for the next 5 ranked applicants.

YIEE Travel Award Winners
Rena	Baek	Chestnut Hill	Massachusetts	USA
Tamara	Blutstein	Baltimore	Maryland	USA
Woosung	Cho	Madison	Wisconsin	USA
Rochelle	Coelho	Richmond	Virginia	USA
Gustavo	da Costa Ferreira	Porto Alegre	Rio Grande do Sul	Brazil
Tamar	Eviatar-Ribak, PhD	Vermillion	South Dakota	USA
Christopher	Gregg, PhD	Cambridge	Massachusetts	USA
Ramya	Kapadia	Madison	Wisconsin	USA
Michael	Kiebish	Chestnut Hill	Massachusetts	USA
Yun	Li	Dallas	Texas	USA
Jungsoo	Min	Newark	New Jersey	USA
Pablo Martin	Paez, PhD	Los Angeles	California	USA
Bruno	Pereira	Little Rock	Arkansas	USA
William	Renthal	Dallas	Texas	USA
Dorothy	Schafer	Farmington	Connecticut	USA
Patracia Fernanda	Schuck	Porto Alegre	Rio Grande do Sul	Brazil
Laura Lucrecia	Sifonios		Buenos Aires	Argentina
Sreevidya	Sivaswamy	Maywood	Illinois	USA
William	Tyler, PhD	Newark	New Jersey	USA
Jihong	Xu, PhD	Little Rock	Arkansas	USA

PDF OF 2008 ASN COMMMITTTEE REPORTS

MEETINGS ASN 2008 - SAN ANTONIO ASN 2009 - CHARLESTON AFFILIATED MEETINGS TRAVEL AWARDS PAST MEETINGS

PUBLICATIONS ASN NEWSLETTER ASN NEWSLETTER ARCHIVES NEUROCHEMISTRY NEWS SURVEYS BASIC NEUROCHEMISTRY TEXT JOURNAL

MEMBERSHIP BENEFITS OF MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION INFORMATION APPLY ONLINE PAY DUES ONLINE SEARCH MEMBERSHIP DIRECTORY

SOCIETY BUSINESS ASN NEWSLETTER

JOB LISTINGS JOB PLACEMENT FORMS JOBS AVAILABLE JOB SEEKERS

AWARDS JORDI FOLCH PI AWARD MARIAN KIES AWARD BERNARD HABER AWARD LATIN AMERICAN AWARD TRAVEL AWARDS

ABOUT THE ASN OFFICERS AND COUNCIL ASN, COMMITTEES BYLAWS, RULES AND CORPORATION HISTORY CONTACT US

RESOURCES FOR THE PUBLIC OTHER NEUROSCIENCE WEB SITES RESEARCH GRANT PROPOSALS

2008 Committee Reports

Intersociety Liaison Report Mary C. McKenna

Intersociety Liaison Report
Mary C. McKenna