GW4 Early Career Neuroscientist Day 2015

The GW4 Early Career Neuroscientist Day (ECND) aims to bring together postgraduates and post-doctoral researchers from Cardiff, Bristol, Bath and Exeter Universities for a day of talks, posters and networking. 

This year's event took place on 21 September at the At-Bristol Science Centre and we welcomed 116 delegates from across the UK, including 49 from Cardiff University. 

There were 58 posters presented across two sessions, supported by £935 from the Company of Biologists. The posters were judged by our Opening and Plenary Lecturers Professors Adrian Harwood and Anne Rosser and four were awarded prizes. 

All presenters were encouraged to deposit their powerpoint or poster pdf on the open access platform F1000Research.

During the agenda's open floor sections, we also hosted 8 exhibitors from Zeiss, Merck, Lonza, Sigma Aldrich, Eppendorf, Promega, Proteintech, and ThermoFisher. Some exhibitors spoke in our Alternative Careers Breakout session, giving delegates insight into job opportunities and niches outside of academia. We have received positive feedback from exhibitors about enthusiastic discussions they were able to have with our delegates.

The ECND committee, with £650 funding from the Company of Biologists, provided each delegate with a proceedings booklet. The agenda in the booklet featured four breakout sessions organised by scientific theme. The 19 speakers in these sessions were chosen from a competitive applicant pool of delegates. Of the speakers, 13 were PhD students, 4 were research associates or fellows, and 2 were Masters Students. These sessions gave delegates an invaluable opportunity (for some their first) to present their work in a conference setting. A prize was awarded to the best oral presentation in each of the four scientific theme sessions.

During our unified sessions, we were honoured to host speakers including Professor Adrian Harwood, Drs. Matt Jones and Anthony Isles, and Professor Anne Rosser. Professor Harwood’s plenary lecture established the concept of “Team Science”, highlighted by the recent Nature Cover1, as the theme of the meeting. During the GW4 speakers session, Dr. Jones and Dr. Isles continued on this tack. Dr. Jones urged delegates to make the best collaborations possible for the scientific question while Dr Isles highlighted the serendipitous overlap of expertise available within the GW4 group. The meeting finished with Professor Rosser's talk about the concerted efforts that have made her research into transplantation therapy for Huntington’s disease possible and which carry it onwards.

Our wonderful assembly of speakers was generously supported by £630 from the Company of Biologists, who also contributed £285 towards a wine and networking reception after the conference. We would like to extend our sincerest thanks to the Company of Biologists for providing funds for early career researchers to present their research and network, thereby strengthening the GW4 alliance.