Donors Enable Record Pool of TPDA Awards to Neuroscience 2025
SAN DIEGO – The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) announces awards to a record 497 neuroscience trainees to attend Neuroscience 2025, the world’s largest gathering of neuroscientists, through the Trainee Professional Development Award (TPDA) program. This cohort represents the largest pool of TPDA recipients in the program’s history. Over $620,000 in generous donations — an 11% increase from 2024 — were contributed by individual donors to the Friends of SfN Fund, foundation and corporate supporters, and SfN Council. SfN Council leads this TPDA fundraising initiative and matched many of the donations.
“With the generosity of this year’s donors, SfN is delighted to support this largest class of competitively selected TPDA awardees to benefit from the unparallelled opportunities at Neuroscience 2025 to present research, build career connections, and hone professional skills,” said Michael Lehman, PhD, TPDA program chair. “At a time when scientists are faced with unprecedented funding challenges, the TPDA program enables early career neuroscientists to attend what may be their first SfN annual meeting, where they can experience the potent intermingling of people and ideas that can spark the next steps in their research and careers.”
The TPDA program provides funding support to promising undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to participate in Neuroscience 2025, followed by year-long access to a variety of SfN’s virtual professional development resources. The 2025 TPDA recipients come from more than 280 institutions from 29 countries around the world.
Donors to the 2025 TPDA program feature two multiyear TPDA supporters, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, which each are contributing $25,000 per year over three years. In addition, the American Brain Foundation, BrightFocus Foundation, Developmental Studies Hybridoma Bank (DSHB), Eli Lilly and Company Foundation, and Science Translational Medicine/AAAS contributed funding this year. The Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute contributed support to joint TPDA/Chen Science Writers Fellowship awards, in which a select group of awardees will write meeting reports to be published by the Chen Institute that summarizes discussions, highlights key themes, and shares innovative research from their Neuroscience 2025 experiences.
Additional 2025 TPDA support was provided by annual contributions from three SfN endowments: the James L. Roberts Fund, the John I. Simpson Fund, and the Nancy Rutledge Zahniser Fund. SfN Council matched all endowment contributions and all institutional contributions of $25,000 and above. SfN Council also matched donations by individuals to the Friends of SfN Fund, which totaled over $68,000 for the 2025 TPDA program.
To learn more about how to support the TPDA program, visit the SfN website or contact development@sfn.org.
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The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) is an organization of over 30,000 basic scientists and clinicians who study the brain and the nervous system.
