SfN Travel Awards
The Society for Neuroscience offers travel awards to graduate students and postdoctoral researchers to allow them to attend the Society's annual meeting. Each year for the past several years our Chapter has been nominating one graduate student and one postdoc for a Society for Neuroscience Travel Award.

2008 Travel Award Competition - Deadline June 13
Each year for the past several years our Chapter has been nominating one graduate student and one postdoc for a Society for Neuroscience Travel Award. If you would like to nominate a graduate student and/or postdoc please submit the indicated information to Keri Bantz and please peruse the guidelines as described below. This year like last year we will do our best to identify some additional local funds in order to offer 2nd and 3rd place travel awards (and possibly more). This is all dependent upon the cooperation of the major Life Sciences and Medicine graduate programs.

Materials required at this stage (by Tuesday June 10, in Word or PDF format, e-mail to Keri.Bantz@osumc.edu):

1. One page CV of the student/postdoc
2. Letter of support from the advisor (see below)
3. A copy of the abstract for the upcoming 2008 SfN meeting in Washington, DC.

SFN Guidelines:

1. The student/postdoc does not need to be an SfN member, but the advisor does
2. High scientific merit of the abstract is absolutely essential
3. The nominee must be the first and presenting author on the abstract
4. The graduate student nominees must have advanced to candidacy for the Ph.D. (they need to have completed their Generals)
5. The lab of the nominee should not have received a Travel Award in the previous year
6. Our Chapter can nominate only one grad student and one postdoc

Our further guidelines:

1. While the quality of the abstract and cv of the student will be the primary criteria for selection, it must be remembered that our nominees will represent our Chapter at the award ceremony at the Annual Meeting. Therefore it is important that the advisor spell out as clearly as possible in his/her support letter the qualities that distinguish a candidate with regards to public engagement. Evidence of such engagement in the form of Neuroscience-related interest group, committee, and club memberships would be a decided plus, while not absolutely required.
2. The grad student nominee can be from any graduate program as long as the advisor is an SfN member

Selection process:
Like last year we will vote on the nominee candidates using an electronic format. This year the results of the voting will be considered and discussed by a nomination committee consisting of the four Chapter officers (Oberdick, Nelson, C. Beattie, Bishop, and Givens, and several additional faculty from the NGSP Grad Studies committee; a nomination committee member may not have a student/postdoc from his/her lab in that year’s nomination cycle). Once our nominees are selected (again, one grad student, one postdoc) we send the materials to the Society office in D.C., the applications from all chapters are considered, and we get notified of the results in September.

Past Travel Award Winners
Graduate Student Award Winners:

• 2007 - Zachary Weil (Dr. Randy Nelson)
• 2006 - Megan Detloff (Dr. D. Michele Basso)
• 2005 - Leah Pyter (Dr. Randy Nelson)
• 2004 - Greg Butcher (Dr. Karl Obrietan)
• 2003 - Anthony Harrington (Dr. Sung Ok Yoon)
• 2002 - Gretchen Neigh-McCandless (Dr. Randy Nelson)
• 2001 - Greg Emch (Dr. Rick Rogers)

Postdoctoral Student Award Winners:

• 2006 - Mary Cheng (Dr. Karl Obrietan)
• 2005 - Rong Chen (Dr. Howard Gu)

SfN Chapter and Activities Grants
A Society of Neuroscience Chater Grant was awarded in March 2008 in the amount of $1500 to provide support for The Ohio State University NEURO (Neuroscience Education: Urban and Rural Outreach) program. NEURO is a group of Ohio State University faculty, students and staff who share the desire to promote neuroscience literacy in the general public. The Central Ohio Chapter received a SfN Activities Grant in the amount of $2000 in October 2004 to support NEURO.