Thank you for your interest in the Winter Conference on Brain Research. For more than fifty years, the Conference has seen several generations of scientists who have propagated science, built collaborations and forged enduring relationships through their attendance and participation. We are proud of our history and are committed to supporting the next generation of neuroscientists. To do so, each year we provide travel fellowships supporting the attendance of junior investigators. In particular, these awards encourage the participation of first-time attendees. Many of the recipients return to the conference for years and even decades, ensuring the continued success of the meeting.
Each year, we bestow the highest ranked Travel Fellow with the Ann Kelley Travel Award. This is a superior honor and memorializes a great leader in the field of neuroscience.
Dr. Ann E. Kelley led an eminent career in which she made groundbreaking contributions to neuropsychopharmacology, beginning as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania as a founder of the Biological Basis of Behavior major. Professor Kelley subsequently won a Thouron fellowship for doctoral study in England, where she joined Dr. Susan Iversen’s lab at the University of Cambridge followed by work as a Research Fellow at Harvard Medical School under the renowned neuroanatomist Walle Nauta. Her papers on striatal organization and projections are citation classics. Importantly, Dr. Kelley was a pioneer for women in science and launched the successful careers of a generation of neuroscientists through her mentoring and teaching. Dr. Kelley’s passion for neuroscience was matched by her passion for life. She could be found equally at home on the ski slopes or the speaker’s podium at the Winter Brain meetings. As a regular participant at the Winter Conference on Brain Research, Dr. Kelley continues to be a major figure in the history of this meeting.
In addition to the Ann Kelley Travel Award, we are introducing the Conan Kornetsky Travel Award, which will complement the Ann Kelley award. In 2020, the top ranked female and male travel fellows will be awarded these distinguished honors.
Conan Kornetsky, Ph.D. was an active faculty member and researcher in the Departments of Psychiatry and Pharmacology at Boston University Medical School where he remained from the mid-1960s until his retirement. His research was focused on determining the neuronal mechanisms involved in the hedonic effects of drugs of abuse and the ways in which environmental cues influence long-term drug effects. Conan was an extraordinary mentor to graduate students, post-docs, and young faculty and received several awards celebrating his mentorship and distinguished research record. He was an active participant in WCBR annually for over 40 years.
We raise funds to endow these fellowships from federal and industry sources, but also rely on generous support from private donations. Therefore, please consider making a donation to the fellowship fund to help us to maximize the support we can provide to those investigators at the first chapters of their careers, who we hope will become integrated into the community of Winter Brain. Your generosity is the key to the enduring success of our meeting.
Please email the WCBR Executive Office at info@winterbrain.org if you are interested in making a donation.
The Winter Conference on Brain Research is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization and so donations to the fellowship fund qualify as US tax-deductible contributions.
Sincerely,
Thomas M. Hyde
Conference Chair
53rd Winter Conference on Brain Research
Big Sky Resort, Big Sky, MT
January 25 – 20, 2020