The First Academic Committee Meeting of the State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience (SKLN) was held at the Institute of Neuroscience on March 15th, 2008. Most of the Academic Committee members, including Professors Lin Chen, Shu-Min Duan, Ai-Ke Guo, Jian-Hong Luo, Qi-Shui Lin, Gang Pei, Mu-Ming Poo (Committee Chair), Bo-Qin Qiang, Xu Zhang, Ya-Ping Zhang, Ping Zheng and Jiang-Ning Zhou, attended this meeting.

During the Progress Report from the SKLN Director Dr. Shu-Min Duan, he overviewed the Laboratory's progress over the past year in scientific research, recruitment, building of core facilities and in collaborations with other institutions. Furthermore, he outlined the main goals of the SKLN in the near future, namely working towards becoming a world class research center in neuroscience and at the same time, through collaborations and interactions, promoting neuroscience in China. Representing respectively the SKLN research directions of neural development, sensory information processing, synaptic plasticity and learning & memory, and neurobiology of diseases, Drs. Yu-Qiang Ding, Xu Zhang, Shu-Min Duan and Yi-Zheng Wang gave talks on the recent progress in each of the four directions. The Academic Committee members gave valuable comments and suggestions following the presentations.

During the discussions, Academic Committee members unanimously suggested that, based on the likelihood of additional government funding for State Key Laboratories, it would be in the interest of the SKLN to put additional efforts in directions potentially related to public health and neurobiological diseases. Based on recent developments in frontiers research worldwide, Prof. Mu-Ming Poo suggested that SKLN puts additional effort in the research area of neural stem cells. Other committee members emphasized that SKLN should strengthen cooperations with other institutes and hospitals within China, and potentially with the foreign research organizations in the future.

Towards the end of meeting, the Academic Committee members visited the Two-Photon Microscopy Core Facility and the Zebrafish and Drosophila Core Facilities.