SfN Welcomes New Leaders
The Society for Neuroscience welcomes its new officers and councilors. Chosen by members using an independent online monitoring company, these council members began their terms at Neuroscience 2015 in Chicago.
Hollis Cline became SfN's newest president. Eric Nestler became the president-elect and Freda Miller became the treasurer-elect. The newest councilors are Diane Lipscombe and Julio Ramirez.
President
Hollis Cline is the Hahn Professor of Neuroscience in the departments of Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience, and Chemical Physiology at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. Her participation at SfN has included serving on Council as a councilor and secretary and chairing the Committee on Committees. She was also a member of the recent Editor-in-Chief Search Committee, the Program Committee, and the NGA/SEA and Young Investigator Award selection committees. Cline’s research focuses on the role of experience-dependent mechanisms in controlling the development, function, and plasticity of the brain circuits, and how circuit development and function become disrupted in neurodevelopmental disorders.
President-Elect
Eric Nestler is the Nash Family Professor of Neuroscience, chair of the Department of Neuroscience, and director of the Friedman Brain Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. He has served on SfN’s Council, Committee on Committees, Public Information Committee, and Program Committee, and as chair of the Jacob P. Waletzky Award Selection Committee. Nestler’s research focuses on linking complex behavior — especially arising from exposure to drugs of abuse or stress — to lasting changes at the level of individual cells and circuits.
Treasurer-Elect
Freda Miller is a senior scientist at the Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute in Toronto, a professor of molecular genetics and physiology at the University of Toronto, a Canada Research Chair in Developmental Neurobiology, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Senior International Research Scholar. In the past, she served on SfN’s Council as both secretary and councilor as well as on the Gruber International Neuroscience Prize Committee and the Grass Foundation Selection Committee. Miller is currently a member of the eNeuro Editorial Advisory Board and was previously a reviewing editor for The Journal of Neuroscience. Her research program explores the development of the mammalian nervous system, focusing especially on neuronal connectivity and developmental mechanisms.
Councilors
Diane Lipscombe is the interim director at the Brown Institute for Brain Science and a professor of neuroscience at Brown University in Providence, R.I. She has served as a member of the Ethics Committee, chair of the Scientific Publications Committee, and reviewing editor for The Journal of Neuroscience. Lipscombe’s laboratory uses genetic, molecular, biophysical, cellular, pharmacological, and behavioral approaches to examine calcium channel diversity throughout the nervous system. Recently, she has studied the effects that human disease-associated mutations have on calcium ion channel function.
Julio Ramirez is the R. Stuart Dickson professor, chair of the Psychology Department, and director of the Neuroscience Program at Davidson College in North Carolina. He is co-director of SfN’s Neuroscience Scholars Program, and in recent years, he has served as a member of the Professional Development Committee (PDC), chair of the Subcommittee on Mentoring, PDC liaison to Committee for Neuroscience Departments and Programs, and member of the Minority Education Training and Professional Advancement Committee. Ramirez studies behavioral neuroscience and hippocampal plasticity, with a focus on recovery of function after injury of the central nervous system.