On April 8th, 2008, Prof. Nikolas Rose, the Chair of the European Neuroscience and Society Network (ENSN), visited ION.
Dr. Shumin Duan was invited to serve on the review committee for the evaluation of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) Program entitled “The significance of neuroglia for formation, function and plasticity of the synapse”. The review meeting was held by DFG in Bonn from April 2nd to 3rd, 2008.
On March 31st, 2008, a delegation from the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM), headed by Prof. André Sytota, the Executive Director of INSERM, visited ION.
Dr. Shumin Duan was invited to attend the Symposium of Purinergic Frontiers in Neuroprotection held in Taiwan, China on March 27th.
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.
A mini-symposium on “Mechanisms of Plasticity, from Molecules to MRI” was held at the Institute of Neuroscience on March 11th, 2008. During the symposium, Prof. Brigitte Roeder from the University of Hamburg, Dr. Joerg-Michael Breustedt from the Charité University Medicine Berlin, Dr. Christian Lohmann from the Max-Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Munich and Prof. Martin Korte from the Technical University at Braunschweig presented their recent works in talks
Prof. Ai-Ke Guo’s research finding on “Dopamine-Mushroom Body Circuit Regulates Saliency-Based Decision Making in Drosophila” was selected as one of the “2007 Top Ten Basic Research News of China”.
On January 10th, Nature Neuroscience published an article from ION entitled “Semaphorin-3A guides radial migration of cortical neurons during development”. This study was conducted in the Laboratory of Neural Development, mainly by graduate students Gang Chen, Jian Sima, and Ming Jin under the supervision of Dr. Xiao-Bing Yuan.The regulatory mechanism for neuronal migration in the developing cortex is a major unsolved problem in developmental neurobiology. It is generally accepted that the migration of newborn pyramidal neurons from the ventricular zone toward upper cortical layers is guided by radial glial fibers in the developing cortex,
The 2007 Joint Retreat between ION and USTC (University of Science and Technology of China) was held at the SIBS lecture hall on December 29th and 31st. Following the traditional Director’s Report from Prof. Mu-Ming Poo, in which he overviewed ION progress over the past year and discussed the definitions and importance of ethical scientific conduct, faculty members, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students from 17 ION laboratories and 7 USTC laboratories presented their recent work. Faculty, staff and students exchanged ideas and talked about potential future collaborations during this retreat.
Mid-term Review of the 973 Grant “Plasticity in Brain Structure and Function” was held in Shantou during December 23rd to 26th, 2007. All six group leaders within the grant, namely Drs. Yu-Qiang Ding, Zhen-Ge Luo, Shu-Min Duan, Xu Zhang, Ai-Ke Guo and Yi-Zheng Wang presented recent research progress and future plans of their respective teams to the review committee.
On December 7th, 2007, a delegation from Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP) and Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF) visited ION, members included:
2007 ION Internal Laboratory Review for recently joined laboratories was held at the Institute of Neuroscience during December 6th to 10th, 2007. Laboratories reviewed included those of Drs. Zuo-Ren Wang, Xiao-Bing Yuan, Xiang Yu, Hai-Shan Yao, Jiu-Lin Du, You-Sheng Shu and Jia-Wei Zhou. In addition to overview presentations by faculty members, graduate students and post-doctoral fellows from these laboratories also presented their recent research progress.
Workshop for Sino-Germany Graduate Program was held at the Institute of Neuroscience November 29th to 30th, 2007. After opening remarks by Professors Martin Heisenburg and Ai-Ke Guo from the University of Würzburg and ION respectively, Prof. Bertram Gerber from the University of Würzburg gave a talk entitled “Pain-relief learning in fruit flies”, while Drs. Xu Zhang, Shu-Min Duan and Zuo-Ren Wang from ION presented their recent works in talks entitled “Molecular mechanisms for chronic pain”, “Regulated ATP release from lysosomes in astrocytes” and “Behavioral study of the neural circuit awaking fly from general anesthesia”. Also during the workshop, six graduate students from the University of Würzburg and eight graduate students from ION presented progress in their recent research works.
The Scientific Programming Meeting of the State Key Laboratory of Neuroscience for year 2008 was held at Su Zhou in Jiang Su Province on November 22nd to 24th, 2007. During the meeting, Drs. Zhen-Ge Luo, Zhi-Qi Xiong, Xiang Yu, Hai-Shan Yao, Jiu-Lin Du, You-Sheng Shu and Wei Wang presented their recent research works.
The memorial service for Prof. Xiang-Tong Zhang (Hsiang-Tung Chang) was held at Shanghai Longhua Funeral Home on November 11th, 2007 at 10:00 A.M. Prof. Zhang is a world-renowned neurophysiologist, a founding father of neuroscience research in China, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CA) and Honorary Director of the Institute of Neuroscience, CAS. The service was attended by nearly seven hundred people,
