ASNTR Annual Meeting Student Travel Awards

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This R13 application seeks funding for the annual meeting of the American Society for Neural Therapy and Repair (ASNTR) 2007. Since its founding in 1994, the ASNTR has convened yearly each April/May in Clearwater, Florida. At the meeting various research advances in the fields of transplantation, neuroengineering and gene therapy applied to neurological diseases such as Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, Alzheimer's disease, stroke, spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury are discussed via platform and poster presentations. ASNTR focuses on treatment strategies throughout all its sessions. Thus, students and postdocs not only learn the basic sciences, they also learn translational issues discussed by basic scientists and clinicians. Therefore, ASNTR is truly a unique gathering. Attendance of this meeting ranges between 125-200 registrants. Each year the ASNTR Education Committee encourages students/postdocs to submit their abstracts in a competition and the top rated applicants receive travel awards to cover the cost of their meeting attendance and travel. ASNTR has always placed a high priority on funding travel awards for students and post-doctoral fellows. In the past ASNTR has received donations from biotech companies and non-profit organizations to cover these travel awards, However, in recent years ASNTR has seen these contributions dwindle and although ASNTR will continue to seek funding from the private sector, we do not anticipate any increase in contributions above recent levels in the coming years. Therefore NIH funding for this activity is critical. As an incentive to encourage young scientists to seek and obtain independent peer reviewed funding, we conduct a very popular short grantsmanship course every two years surrounding the ASNTR annual meeting for the travel award winners and students. This application requests $20,000 in total direct costs to support travel awards for the top 20 graduate students/postdocs from US institutions that apply (awards of $1000 per student/postdoc) and $5000 to support the short grantsmanship course. NIH funding for this travel award and short grantsmanship course is crucial to continue the momentum created by previous funding of this activity and to encourage young investigators into this fledgling field of translational neuroscience. ASNTR and its educational committee includes and encourages participation of minorities including women and persons with disabilities in all its activities.