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The renowned UCL Neuroscience Symposium has been running for 15 years, it is a fantastic opportunity to find out more about some of the latest neuroscience research going on at UCL.
UCL Neuroscience Symposium 2024 - Thursday 20 June 2024
Over 600 UCL neuroscientists are expected to attend, delegates will have the chance to create new cross-disciplinary links and foster collaboration between basic and clinical researchers discover new research applications and meet potential industry partners.
We are delighted to announce that the following speakers are confirmed for this year's symposium:
- Dr Athena Akrami, Senior Research Fellow, The Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, UCL
- Dr Elena Dreosti, Senior Research Fellow, Cell & Developmental Biology, UCL
- Professor Karen Duff, Director of the UK Dementia Research Institute, UCL
- Professor Sarah Garfinkel, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL
- Professor Pieter Roelfsema, Director of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam
- Professor Aman Saleem, Experimental Psychology, UCL
Programme
8.15am - 9:00am - Registration
9.00am - 4.45pm - Talks
4.45pm - 6pm - Drinks Reception
The full programme can be downloaded.
Early Career Neuroscience Prize 2024 - submissions are now open!
Each year the UCL Neuroscience Domain presents the Early Career Neuroscience Prize to two UCL neuroscientists. The prize aims to recognise outstanding work published in the past year by early career UCL neuroscientists in any field of neuroscience, and is awarded in two categories:
• PhD student – Junior postdoc (up to 3 years post-PhD)
• Senior Postdoc (+3 years post-PhD) – Junior PI (within 5 years of starting your lab)
Winners will receive a prize of £750 and will be given the opportunity to present their work at the annual UCL Neuroscience Symposium.
The deadline to apply is Monday 29 April 2024, 13:00.
Further details on eligibility and how to apply.
Abstract submission – now open!
On registration, all attendees are eligible to submit an abstract for poster presentation on the day but due to limited space this is on a first come, first served basis. You will be notified by Monday 29 April 2024 if your poster has been accepted on the basis of the submitted abstract.
On the day, two prizes will be awarded: one prize for the best research poster in the junior category, Master and PhD students, and one in the senior category, post-doctoral researchers. All research abstracts submitted will be considered and a short list will be judged on the day. More details will be given closer to the event day. When preparing your abstract, bear in mind that your abstract will be evaluated by a panel of diverse scientific backgrounds and should therefore be accessible to the entire UCL neuroscience community. Clear introduction, hypotheses, methods, results and conclusions are expected. All abstract longer than 200 words will be excluded from the shortlisting for prizes
Abstract submission is part of the registration process, but applicants need to register by Monday 8 April, using the ticket type 'Abstract/poster submission and in-person ticket'. Please note, no posters will be accepted on the day when abstracts have not been submitted in advance.
Jon Driver Prize - submissions now open!
To honour the memory of Jon Driver, an annual Prize is awarded to outstanding young neuroscientists from UCL. The Award will be announced at the UCL Neuroscience Symposium. The winner will be asked to give a short presentation of the work that the award was given for.
Eligibility
PhD students within the Neuroscience Domain at UCL who are engaged in cognitive, system and circuit based neuroscience research (registered at the time of the application deadline).
Deadline
Monday 22 April 2024, 13:00
Requirements
- 2 page CV with publication list
- Motivation statement (500 words)
- 1-page abstract describing work to be considered (SFN abstract format)
- Supporting statement from supervisor/sponsor
- 50-word biography
- Proposed title for talk at Neuroscience Symposium if selected
- High-resolution photograph of yourself
Award
Cash £500 awarded to the winner. The winner will be asked to give a short presentation of the work that the award was given for at the symposium on Thursday 20 June 2024.
Further details on eligibility and how to apply.
2022 Neuroscience Symposium
The UCL 2022 Neuroscience Symposium took place on Wednesday 22 June and after two years of meeting remotely, the symposium once again took place in-person. Over 800 attendees from UCL and beyond enjoyed a day of fascinating talks and plenty of opportunity to network with colleagues and build new collaborations.
The abstract booklet for the UCL Neuroscience Symposium 2022 is now available to download:
There were two very popular poster sessions with 106 research posters across 8 themes:
Cognition and Behaviour
Developmental Neuroscience
Disorders of the Nervous System
Homeostatic and Neuroendocrine Systems
Neural Excitability, Synapses, and Glia: Cellular Mechanisms
Novel Methods, Resources and Technology
Other Posters
Sensory and Motor Systems Posters
Speakers
- Professor Stephen Fleming - Thinking about thinking: Metacognition, confidence and changes of mind
- Professor Sonja Hofer - Inhibitory control of visually-guided behaviour
- Professor Manju Kurian - Developing precision medicine approaches for childhood movement disorders
- Professor Nicholas Lesica - Hearing loss and hearing aids: a neural coding perspective
- Dr Stephanie Koch, Activity-dependent shaping of sensorimotor circuits
- Professor Mina Ryten - How much do we understand about basic structure of common disease-causing genes?
- Professor Sanjay Sisodiya - Climate Change and Neuroscience
Early Career Neuroscience Prize
The 2022 Early Career Neuroscience prize was won by Candela Sánchez Bellot (Junior Category), and Stéphane Bugeon (Advanced Category). The prize aims to recognise outstanding work published in the past year by early career UCL neuroscientists in any field of neuroscience, and is awarded in two categories; junior scientist (PhD students or post-docs with up to 3 years post-doc experience) and advanced scientist (from 4 and up to 10 years post-doc experience). Winner received a cash prize and had the opportunity to present a talk on their winning paper at the symposium.
Junior Category
Candela Sánchez Bellot, Andrew MacAskill Lab, UCL Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology.
Winning Paper: Two opposing hippocampus to prefrontal cortex pathways for the control of approach and avoidance behaviour
Advanced Category
Stéphane Bugeon, Cortexlab, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology
Winning Paper: A transcriptomic axis predicts state modulation of cortical interneurons.
Jon Driver Prize
Two winners were awarded the Jon Driver prize and gave a short talk:
Anna-Leigh Brown, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology
TDP-43 cryptic splicing uncovers the mechanism behind an intronic ALS/FTD risk variant in synaptic gene UNC13A
Dustin Herrmann, Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research
Functional organization and dendritic integration of feedback in visual cortex
Research Poster Prize
Javier Sanchez Bautista - Progranulin deficiency causes mitochondrial bioenergetic defects in frontotemporal dementia
Sara Hestehave - Chronic pain and emotional comorbidities in joint pain, - targeting the chronic pain- and stress-regulator FKBP51 to combat it all
- 2021 Neuroscience Symposium
The UCL Neuroscience Symposium 2021 took place on Tuesday 15 June. Nearly 450 people attended what was a fascinating afternoon, with some great talks, both from our Keynote speaker, Professor Vanessa Ruta (The Rockefeller University) and also from the four UCL speakers; Professor Gareth Barnes, Professor Caswell Barry, Dr Sandrine M. Géranton and Dr Soyon Hong.
For the first time, we held an online poster and rapid poster presentation session which was attended by 274 people. This showcased research posters from colleagues across the Neuroscience Domain. 50 posters were presented as rapid presentations during the poster session of the symposium. The remaining 61 posters had the option to be displayed online with accompanying video presentations. On the day, the 50 rapid poster presentation were split into 6 virtual rooms in the following themes:
- Computational Neuroscience and AI
- Cognition & cognitive dysfunction
- Disorders of the nervous system: molecular and genetics
- Disorders of the nervous system: cellular mechanisms
- Neural circuits and behaviour
- Sensory motor systems and dysfunction
The winner of the Best Rapid Poster Presentation was Philip Coen – ‘Mouse frontal cortex mediates additive multisensory decisions’. The runner-up was Emmett Thompson – ‘Dorsolateral striatum composes multi-step motor sequences through the assembly of subsequence elements’
In Autumn 2021 there will be Early Career Researcher event, where the winners of the Jon Driver Prize and the UCL Neuroscience Early Career Prize will present their winning work. Winners not yet announced.
- 2020 Neuroscience Symposium
The UCL Neuroscience Symposium 2020 took place on Friday 26 June, as a half-day event and online due to COVID-19. Over 600 people attended what was a fascinating afternoon, with some great speakers.
Speakers
Keynote: Professor Ed Bullmore (University of Cambridge)
Dr Tiago Branco (Sainsbury Wellcome Centre)
Professor Karen Duff (UK DRI at UCL)
rofessor Pasco Fearon (UCL Division of Psychology and Language Sciences)
Dr Vilaiwan Fernandes (UCL Division of Biosciences)
Dr Peter Kok (Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging)
In the Autumn, a UCL Neuroscience Early Career Prize Winners Showcase was held on Tuesday 10 November where the the 2020 winners of the Jon Driver Prize and UCL Neuroscience Early Career Prize presented their prize winning research .
The prize winners and speakers were:
Early Career Neuroscience Prize
Junior Category
Yunzhe Liu (Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research)
Winning paper: Human replay spontaneously reorganizes experience. Yunzhe Liu, Raymond J. Dolan, Zeb Kurth-Nelson, and Timothy E.J. Behrens. Cell (2019); 178(3): 640–652
Advanced Category
Dr Dimitar Kostadinov (Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, UCL)
Winning paper: Predictive and reactive reward signals conveyed by climbing fiber inputs to cerebellar Purkinje cells. Dimitar Kostadinov , Maxime Beau , Marta Blanco- Pozo , and Michael Häusser. Nature Neuroscience (2019), 22: 950-962
Jon Driver Prize
Pablo Izquierdo (UCL Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology) - Synapse development is regulated by microglial THIK-1 K+ channels
Yunzhe Liu (Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research) - Neural replay in abstraction and inference
Max Rollwage (Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research) - Cognitive and neural mechanism underlying confirmation bias
- 2019 Neuroscience Symposium
The UCL Neuroscience Symposium 2019 took place on Friday 21 June. Over 800 attendees from UCL and beyond enjoyed a day of fascinating talks and plenty of opportunity to network with colleagues and build new collaborations.
The abstract booklet for the UCL Neuroscience Symposium 2019 is now available to download: View Poster Abstract Booklet (pdf)There were two very popular poster sessions with 93 research posters across 8 themes:
- Cognition and Behaviour
- Developmental Neuroscience
- Disorders of the Nervous System
- Homeostatic and Neuroendocrine Systems
- Neural Excitability, Synapses and Glia Posters
- Novel Methods, Resources and Technology
- Other Posters e.g. History of Neuroscience
- Sensory and Motor Systems Posters
Speakers
The 2019 keynote addresses were delivered by Professor Professor Li-Huei Tsai, Massachusetts Institute of Technology – ‘Network level approaches to studying Alzheimer’s Disease’. And Professor Gero Miesenböck, University of Oxford – ‘Mechanisms for balancing sleep need and sleep’
We also had talks from five UCL speakers:- Professor Andreas Schaefer - From Synchrotrons to Microwires – a broad view on sensory processing
- Professor Olga Ciccarelli - Advances in imaging in multiple sclerosis
- Dr Benedetto di Martino - Value, uncertainty and behavioural control
- Professor Tali Sharot - Affect and decisions-making in health and disease
- Professor Maria Chait - How the brain discovers structure in sound sequences – from environmental sounds to music
Early Career Neuroscience Prize
The 2019 Early Career Neuroscience prize was won by Dominic Evans and Vanessa Stempel (Junior Category), and Nathan Skene (Advanced Category). The prize aims to recognise outstanding work published in the past year by early career UCL neuroscientists in any field of neuroscience, and is awarded in two categories; junior scientist (PhD students or post-docs with up to 3 years post-doc experience) and advanced scientist (from 4 and up to 10 years post-doc experience). Winner received a cash prize and had the chance to present a talk on their winning paper at the Symposium.
Junior Category
Dominic Evans and Vanessa Stempel, UCL Sainsbury Wellcome CentreWinning Paper - A synaptic threshold mechanism for computing escape decisions. Evans DA, Stempel AV, Vale R, Ruehle S, Lefler Y, Branco T. Nature. 2018 Jun; 558(7711):590-594
Advanced Category
Nathan Skene, UCL Institute of NeurologyWinning Paper - Genetic identification of brain cell types underlying schizophrenia. Skene NG, Bryois J, Bakken TE, Breen G, Crowley JJ, Gaspar HA, Giusti-Rodriguez P, Hodge RD, Miller JA, Muñoz-Manchado AB, O’Donovan MC, Owen MJ, Pardiñas AF, Ryge J, Walters JTR, Linnarsson S, Lein ES; Major Depressive Disorder Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, Sullivan PF, Hjerling-Leffler J. Nature Genetics. 2018 Jun; 50(6):825-833
Jon Driver Prize
One winner was awarded the Jon Driver prize gave a 5 minute talk:
Sean Cavanagh, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology – ‘The role of neuronal timescales in cognition’
Research Poster Prize
Winning Poster: Shana Silverstein, Observational fear learning: a behaviorally translational approach from mouse to man
Runner up: Ryan Wee, Hippocampal circuits for the state-dependent control of feeding behaviour
- 2018 Neuroscience Symposium
The UCL Neuroscience Symposium 2018 took place on Friday 22 June. Over 800 attendees from UCL and beyond enjoyed a day of fascinating talks and plenty of opportunity to network with colleagues and build new collaborations.
The abstract booklet for the UCL Neuroscience Symposium 2018 is now available to download: View Poster Abstract Booklet (pdf)There were two very popular poster sessions which featured 10 lab posters and 119 research posters across 8 themes:
- Cognition and Behaviour
- Developmental Neuroscience
- Disorders of the Nervous System
- Homeostatic and Neuroendocrine Systems
- Neural Excitability, Synapses and Glia Posters
- Novel Methods, Resources and Technology
- Other Posters e.g. History of Neuroscience
- Sensory and Motor Systems Posters
Speakers
The 2018 keynote addresses were delivered by Professor Daniel Wolpert, Columbia University, New York and Dr Matt Botvinick, DeepMind.
We also had talks from six UCL speakers:- Professor Sarah Tabrizi - Antisense oligonucleotide therapy for Huntington's disease - results from the first HTT lowering clinical trial
- Professor Chris Brewin - Understanding memory impairment in PTSD: Coherence, disorganisation, and fragmentation
- Professor Tim Behrens - Building models of the world for controlling behaviour
- Professor Mairead Macsweeney - Insights from deafness and sign language
- Dr Andrew MacAskill - Cellular diversity in the ventral hippocampus
- Dr Arantza Barrios - Neural circuits underlying sex differences in behaviour
Early Career Neuroscience Prize
The 2018 Early Career Neuroscience prize was won by Anna Krasnow (Junior Category), and Dr Rebecca Lawson (Advanced Category). The prize aims to recognise outstanding work published in the past year by early career UCL neuroscientists in any field of neuroscience, and is awarded in two categories; junior scientist (PhD students or post-docs with up to 3 years post-doc experience) and advanced scientist (from 4 and up to 10 years post-doc experience). Winner received a cash prize and had the chance to present a talk on their winning paper at the Symposium.
Junior Category
Anna Krasnow, UCL Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology
Winning Paper - Regulation of developing myelin sheath elongation by oligodendrocyte calcium transients in vivo. Nature Neuroscience, 2018 Jan;21(1):24-28. Krasnow AM, Ford MC, Valdivia LE, Wilson SW, Atwell D
Advanced Category
Dr Rebecca Lawson, Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL
Winning Paper - Adults with autism overestimate the volatility of the sensory environment. Nature Neuroscience, 2017 Sept; 20(9): 1293-1299. Lawson RP, Mathys C and Rees GJon Driver Prize
Two winners were awarded the Jon Driver prize and each gave 5 minute talks:
Andrea Banino - Neuroscience and AI: modelling the brain using deep neural networks
Ruben Duque do Vale - Spatial navigation during escape behaviours in mice
Research Poster Prize
Winning Poster: Mr Philip Coen, Audiovisual spatial localization in head-fixed mice
Runner up: Mr Nathaniel Hafford Tear, Antisense therapy for a common corneal dystrophy ameliorates TCF4 repeat expansion-mediated toxicityBlog
A blog about the Symposium by Oriol Pavon is available to read here:
http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/events/2018/08/15/the-2018-ucl-neuroscience-symposium/
- 2017 Neuroscience Symposium
The UCL Neuroscience Symposium 2017 took place on Friday 16 June and was a great success. Over 800 attendees from UCL and beyond enjoyed a day of fascinating talks and plenty of opportunity to network with colleagues and build new collaborations.
There were two very popular poster sessions which featured 12 lab posters and 145 research posters across 8 themes:- Cognition and Behaviour
- Developmental Neuroscience
- Novel Methods, Resources and Technology
- Other Posters e.g. History of Neuroscience
- Sensory and Motor Systems Posters
- Disorders of the Nervous System
- Homeostatic and Neuroendocrine Systems
- Neural Excitability, Synapses and Glia Posters
Speakers
The 2017 keynote addresses were delivered by Professor Richard Morris, University of Edinburgh and Professor Barbara Sahakian, University of Cambridge.
We also had talks from six UCL speakers:
Dr Jennifer Bizley - How does seeing improve listening?
Professor Jernej Ule - The surprising RNA biology of neurons: recursive splicing and beyond
Dr Tamar Makin - Brain plasticity in amputees
Dr Isaac Bianco - Vision to action: Sensorimotor processing in larval zebrafish
Professor Christiana Ruhrberg - Cross-talk of neural progenitors and blood vessels in the developing brain
Dr Sergi Costafreda Gonzalez - Hearing loss and risk of dementiaEarly Career Neuroscience Prize
The 2016 Early Career Neuroscience prize was won by Dr Karin Tuschl (Junior Category), and Dr Aude Marzo (Advanced Category). The prize aims to recognise outstanding work published in the past year by early career UCL neuroscientists in any field of neuroscience, and is awarded in two categories; junior scientist (PhD students or post-docs with up to 3 years post-doc experience) and advanced scientist (from 4 and up to 10 years post-doc experience). Winner received a cash prize and had the chance to present a talk on their winning paper at the Symposium.
Junior Category
Dr Karin Tuschl, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health & UCL Department of Cell and Developmental Biology Winning Paper - Mutations in SLC39A14 disrupt manganese homeostasis and cause childhood-onset parkinsonism-dystonia. Nature Communications, 2016 May 27;7:11601. Tuschl K, Meyer E, …… Kurian MA, Wilson SW
Advanced Category
Dr Aude Marzo, UCL Department of Cell and Developmental Biology Winning Paper - Reversal of synapse degeneration by restoring Wnt signalling in the adult hippocampus. Current Biology, 2016 Oct 10;26(19):2551-2561 . Marzo A, Galli S, Lopes D, McLeod F, Podpolny M, Segovia-Roldan M, Ciani L, Purro S, Cacucci F, Gibb A, Salinas PCLaboratory Poster prize
Winning Poster Professor Rachael Pearson - UCL Institute of Ophthalmology Poster title: Cell based therapies for retinal repair Runner up Professor Sara Mole - MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology Poster title: Batten disease
Links
A write-up of the event is available on the UCL events blog website
The abstract booklet for the UCL Neuroscience Symposium 2017 is now available to download: View Poster Abstract Booklet (pdf)
- 2016 Neuroscience Symposium
The UCL Neuroscience Symposium 2016 took place on Friday 24th June and was a great success. Over 800 attendees from UCL and beyond enjoyed a day of fascinating talks and plenty of opportunity to network with colleagues and build new collaborations.
There were two very popular poster sessions which featured 22 lab posters and 149 research posters across 8 themes:- Cognition and Behaviour
- Developmental Neuroscience
- Disorders of the Nervous System
- Homeostatic and Neuroendocrine Systems
- Neural Excitability, Synapses and Glia Posters
- Novel Methods, Resources and Technology
- Other Posters e.g. History of Neuroscience
- Sensory and Motor Systems Posters
Speakers
The 2016 keynote addresses were delivered by Professor Leslite Vosshall of the Rockefeller University, USA, and Dr Rick Livesey of The Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge.
We also had talks from six UCL speakers:
Professor Maneesh Sahani - Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit; Making sense of neural populations
Dr Suzanne Reeves - UCL Division of Psychiatry; Is there a therapeutic window of antipsychotic prescribing in Alzheimer's disease?
Professor Alison Lloyd - MRC/UCL Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology; The cellular complexity of peripheral nerve regeneration
Professor Jonathan Roiser - UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience; Is depression caused by a hyperactive habenula?
Dr Sam Solomon - UCL Division of Psychology and Language Sciences; Freeze or flight: vision guides choice of defence strategies in mice
Professor Gillian Bates - UCL Institute of Neurology; Insights into the molecular basis of Huntington's DiseaseEarly Career Neuroscience Prize
The 2016 Early Career Neuroscience prize was won by Maria Maiarù (Junior Category), and Dr Nicola Hamilton-Whitaker (Advanced Category).
The prize aims to recognise outstanding work published in the past year by early career UCL neuroscientists in any field of neuroscience, and is awarded in two categories; junior scientist (PhD students or post-docs with up to 3 years post-doc experience) and advanced scientist (from 4 and up to 10 years post-doc experience). Winner received a cash prize and had the chance to present a talk on their winning paper at the Symposium.
Junior Category
Maria Maiarù, UCL Department of Cell and Developmental Biology.
Winning Paper - The stress regulator FKBP51 drives chronic pain by modulating spinal glucocorticoid signalling. Maiarù M, Tochiki KK, Annan LV, Bell CG, Feng X, Hausch F, Geranton SM. Science Translational Medicine. 2016, 8, 325: pp.325ra19.
Advanced Category
Dr Nicola Hamilton Whitaker, UCL Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology
Winning Paper - Proton-gated Ca2+-permeable TRP channels damage myelin in conditions mimicking ischaemia. Hamilton NB, Kolodziejczy K, Kougioumtzidou E, Attwell D. Nature. January 2016. 529, 523-527Laboratory Poster prize
Winning Poster
Joerg Albert - UCL Ear Institute
Poster title: Drosophila mechanosensory systems as a universal tool for sensory biology
Runner up
Alex Leff - UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
Poster title: Developing digital neuro-interventions and understanding how they interact with surviving language networks
Links
A write-up of the event is available here: Neuroscience Symposium blog (pdf)
The abstract booklet for the UCL Neuroscience Symposium 2016 is now available to download: Abstract booklet (pdf)