News & Announcements

Past news and announcements are shown below. Current news is shown on our homepage.

Patricia Wadsworth, incoming Director of the Interdepartmental Graduate Programs (IDGP), Awarded the 2018 CNS Outstanding Service/Engagement Award

Patricia (Pat) Wadsworth, Professor and Associate Chair of Biology, who will become the Director of IDGP in June 2018, has been awarded the 2018 CNS Outstanding Service/Engagement Award. CNS Outstanding Achievement Awards recognize excellence and honor faculty and staff members and students who have made important contributions to their discipline, department, college, and university. Recipients are presented with their awards at a special ceremony in the spring. Read More

First Annual UMass Interdisciplinary Neurosciences Conference

Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Room 135 Integrated Sciences Building
UMass Amherst
Talks start at 12:45
https://sites.google.com/view/umass-neurosciences
 

Upcoming OPD Workshop: Strategies and Tools to Secure External Funding 

Goodell Building

Wednesday, May 16th - 2:30-3:30pm
LSL N610

Searching for Funding: Interdisciplinary Graduate Programsd in Life Sciences (IDGP)

Would you like to have external funding to support your research, and bolster your CV? Get started by learning about basic tools available to UMass graduate students and postdocs to help find grants and fellowships. Dr. Heidi Bauer Clapp, Assistant Director for Grants & Fellowships in the Graduate School Office of Professional Development, will present an external funding workshop to IDGP Students, Post-Docs, and Faculty We’ll discuss common funding sources for students in the life sciences, how to search for funding as an international student, and strategize how to align funding applications with your graduate career. 

UPCOMING OFFICE OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOPS

Outreach and Public Engagement Summit: Wednesday, April 11

Are you interested in finding a larger audience for your research or pursuing a career in outreach and public engagement? If so,then please attend the April 11th Outreach and Public Engagement Summit, which will help you make the connections and provide you with information necessary to achieve your goals.  Pre-registration is requested: https://tinyurl.com/OPESummit.

First Annual UMass Interdisciplinary Neurosciences Conference: Wednesday, May 2, 12:30-7:00 PM

This conference is meant to showcase the breadth of research on the UMass campus and in Western Massachusetts highlighting neuroscience research interests that span biology, cognition, computation, engineering, medicine, and public health. This exciting event features a half-day symposium with Keynote Speaker, Dr. Wolfram Schultz (Cambridge University) and UMass Alumni Speaker Dr. Graeme Davis (University of California, San Francisco). In addition, there will be talks from researchers in four different colleges at UMass Amherst, followed by a catered reception and poster session. Researchers from UMass and other institutions are invited to attend and present a poster on their work related to the neurosciences. Registration is free and open to all career stages. For more information and to register for the conference please go to: First Annual UMass Interdisciplinary Neurosciences Conference

 

Deadline for poster registration is April 18th. 

That's Life [Science] grad student blog publishes their 150th post

That's Life Science 150th blog post photo

Graduate students in the UMass IDGP programs created That's Life [Science], an interdisciplinary outreach blog, in 2016. Since then, the group has published 150 articles covering interesting topics across life science fields for the general public. "A Day in the Life of a Bird Nerd" is their 150th article!

Podos and Remage-Healey publish Nature paper on swamp sparrows

A team of researchers including Jeffrey Podos, Biology, and Luke Remage-Healey, Psychological & Brain Sciences, reported in Nature the discovery in the forebrain HVC of sensorimotor “bridge” neurons in swamp sparrows that simultaneously and selectively represent two critical learning-related schemas: the bird’s own song, and the specific tutor model from which that song was copied. Read More: Nature

NSB Graduate Student, Daniel Vahaba, Publishes Findings in eNeuro

Daniel Vahaba

NSB doctoral candidate Dan Vahaba recently published a paper in the open-access journal eNeuro titled, "Sensory Coding and Sensitivity to Local Estrogens Shift during Critical Period Milestones in the Auditory Cortex of Male Songbirds". Dan's work, co-authored by fellow NSB grad student Matheus Macedo-Lima, reveals an age-dependent shift in auditory processing and lateralized sensitivity to neuroestrogens that tracks vocal learning milestones in developing songbirds. Read More

LSGRC 7th Annual Life Sciences Graduate Research Symposium, Friday, November 17!

LSGRC 7th Annual Life Sciences Graduate Research Symposium

The 7th annual UMass Life Sciences Graduate Research Symposium will be held on Friday, November 17. The event brings together graduate students from all areas of life sciences research at UMass to present their work in both talks (9:00am - 5:00pm, Life Sciences Laboratories Building, Room S340) and a poster session/lunch (12:30pm - 2:00 pm). This event is open to everyone who wants to learn about the fantastic life sciences work going on at UMass! The schedule for presentations is available on the LSGRC facebook page.

UMass Amherst Neuroscientists Receive $2.36 Million Grant to Improve Brain Research Tools

photo of Rosie Cowell and Dave Huber

Cognitive neuroscientists Rosie Cowell and David Huber at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently received a four-year, $2.36 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a new computational tool that will help researchers in interpreting functional magnetic resonance images (fMRI) of the brain and improve accuracy in relating fMRI data to neural responses in the brain.   (Read more)

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