Charan Ranganath received the Cognitive Neuroscience Society Young Investigator Award in Spring 2008.

Colenso Speer, from Barbara Chapman's lab, and Kate Waimey, from Hwai-Jong Cheng's lab,  received the ARCS award for 2008-2009.

Karen Zito received the 2008 SfN Next Generation Award at the Junior Faculty level in recognition of her research and extensive work in neuroscience outreach.  Dr. Zito also received the 2008 Hellman Family Foundation fellowship for "newer professors who show the capacity for great distinction in their research."

Congratulations to the following 2008 graduates: Sarah Karlen, Sarah Lindstrom, Lawrence Low, Mia Minoletti, Amrita Puri and Bong Walsh!

The Training Program in Basic Neuroscience, a Ruth L. Kirschstein training grant from NIMH, submitted by Ted Jones, was recently funded. This grant will support funding for 4 graduate students for their first year of training and provides a number of exciting training resources to our program. 

UC DAVIS RECEIVES MORE THAN $21 MILLION TO FIND TREATMENTS THAT REVERSE COMMON CAUSE OF DEMENTIA. The funding will establish the NeuroTherapeutics Research Institute.  Led by molecular geneticist Paul Hagerman, the institute is one of nine interdisciplinary research consortia announced recently by the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research.  To accomplish this goal, the Paul and Randi Hagerman, who originally discovered FXTAS, will be joined in their research efforts by neuroscientist Robert Berman and cognitive neuroscientists Tony Simon and Cameron Carter.  The five-year grant is the largest funding award in history to focus on this or any other fragile X-related disorder.  Each will lead distinct research teams to identify, test and measure the outcomes of therapeutic interventions for FXTAS at the University of California, Davis, which is dedicated to finding effective interventions that reduce or eliminate the debilitating balance problems, tremors and dementia associated with older adults who have FXTAS, or fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome.

Rick Addante, a from Andy Yonelinas' lab, attended a course at Cold Spring Harbor on Autism Spectrum Disorders in June 2007 and the National Institue of Mental Health (NIMH) Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience at UC Davis in July 2008.

Marie Burns was named the founding Director of the newly created Center for Visual Sciences, September 2007. This Center, in conjunction with the Training Program in Visual Sciences, chaired by Jack Werner, and the Vision Sciences Core Grant fosters interaction between all vision scientists across the UC Davis campus and Medical School.

Earl Carstens organized the “International Forum for the Study of Itch” in San Francisco, September 2007.

Paul Knoefler  just received a $2.2 million prestigious New Faculty Award from the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). The CIRM grant supports research in my lab to explore ways to make stem cell based regenerative medicine safer and to discover new stem cell regulatory molecules.

Marty Usrey and Barbara Chapman directed the Cold Spring Harbor Course on “Structure, Function, and Development of the Visual System,” July 2007.

Several faculty members were appointed as editors this year. Tony Simon was appointed Associate Editor of the American Journal of Mental Retardation. Marty Usrey is a Reviewing Editor and Kim McAllister is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Neuroscience. Marty Usrey is also an Associate Editor and Karen Zito a Reviewing Editor for the new journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.

Kim McAllister received the Society for Neuroscience Young Investigator Award, November 2006, and was named a UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellow in 2007.

Petr Janata received a large grant from the Templeton Advanced Research Program to study how music, spirituality, and religion affect the human brain.

Mamiko Niwa received an individual predoctoral NRSA from NIH for her research in Mitch Sutter’s lab for 2007-2010.  Grant Nichols is also supported by an individual predoctoral NRSA from NIH for his research in Will DeBello’s lab for 2007-2010.

Georgia Woods was awarded the Floyd and Mary Schwall Dissertation Year Fellowship for her thesis work in Karen Zito’s lab.

Karen Zito chaired a minisymposium on “The formation and maturation of dendritic spine synapses” at the Annual Society for Neuroscience meeting this Fall in San Diego. At the same meeting, Kim McAllister spoke in a symposium titled “Connection Central: The dynamics and control of synapse formation” and Leah Krubitzer spoke in a symposium titled “Evolution of Brains and Behavior.”

Karen Zito is funded by a Burroughs Wellcome Career Award in the Biological Sciences.

Xiaodong Zhang was awarded the postdoctoral fellowship from the American Heart Associateion (AHA), Western States Affiliate for 6/1/07-6/30/09.  The funding amount was $90,000.

Congratulations to the following 2007 graduates: Denise Cook, Amy Lincoln, Noah Merin and Daniel Slutsky!