Past ISDN Meeting 2002 Sydney, Australia
The 2002 biennial meeting in Sydney was really exciting. The science was great, the venue breathtaking, and the only complaint heard about was that there was too much to do. The Darling Harbor Conference Center was a real treat. There were perhaps too many things possible for the one free afternoon, so much so that it was tempting to sign up for more than one event but alas, no clones were available to make this possible. Clearly the hard work of Ian Hendry, Ralph Bradshaw and Phil Waite paid off. There was the added benefit and attraction, both scientific and social, of the shared venue with the Australian Society for Neuroscience Meeting, which in its own right is a major neuroscience society. The support and collaboration of Perry Bartlett made the transition through the shared one-day of sessions seamless and most enjoyable - yes two opening receptions to enjoy. One of the treats at ISDN and ANS also was the large number of neuroscientists who made their first visit to down under and ISDN both. Our society benefits from this increase in participation of outstanding scientists, which was also the result of the labor of the program chair Ralph Bradshaw. Professor Bashir, the first woman to be appointed Governor of New South Wales, a Psychiatry Professor at the Universities of Sydney and New South Wales opened the meeting most graciously, a scientist herself, who delighted us with an opening talk such as one expects not from a successful politician but from a colleague from the laboratory down the hall. It was both a treat and a tribute to Australia that in choosing its leaders it can look at academia for its choices. We all felt that maybe we can learn from the Australians in the rest of the world.
Topics at the meeting included:
- molecular basis of plasticity
- neural induction and patterning
- stem cell research
- axonal guidance
- inflammation and neurodegeneration
