Eureka Prize. Congratulations to Trevor Kilpatrick and the Multiple Sclerosis Group at the Howard Florey Institute on being awarded the prestigious Eureka Prize for Medical Research in 2008. The Australian Museum Eureka Prizes are the nation’s highest profile science awards. The 26 researchers and students in the MS Group are developing therapies that either target the neurodegenerative component of MS or enhance the capacity for nervous system repair. They are concentrating on three areas of research: stem cell biology, neuroprotection, and the development of imaging techniques to analyse the efficacy of therapeutic candidates.

State-Based Activities. The organisation of the Annual Scientific Meeting is the most important function of ANS. The Council, the Local Organising Committee and Sally Jay Conferences put a great deal of effort into ensuring the high quality of the Meetings, which invariably are well received by the membership. But the question arises, is ANS doing enough to support our members in the other 51 weeks of the year? This has led Council to consider how the Society can encourage and support state-based activities. It is clear that a top-down approach is usually not appropriate here, although the great success of the Brain Bee throughout Australia and New Zealand indicates there are important exceptions.

There is not a one-size-fits-all solution to promoting communication between members in each state. It is not surprising that those states with smaller numbers of members have found it easier to organise activities that are broadly inclusive. Examples this year include workshops organised in the ACT, Western Australia and South Australia, with financial assistance provided by ANS. Maarten Kole and Clarke Raymond from the Australian National University organised the Kioloa Neuroscience Colloquium on 12-13 April; the plenary lectures by Pankaj Sah and Vaughan Macefield were sponsored by ANS. Bernadette Madja from the University of Western Australia organised the Symposium of Western Australian Neuroscience (SWAN) on 19^th September to promote exchange between researchers and clinicians on the theme of “Repair and Renew”; ANS sponsored two prizes for PhD students, which will assist them to attend the Canberra ANS Meeting.

Nick Spencer from Flinders University organised a workshop on “The Future of Neuroscience in South Australia” on 21^st August, under the auspices of ANS and the South Australian Neuroscience Institute (SANI). I was delighted to attend the workshop at the National Wine Centre and particularly enjoyed the presentations by Marcello Costa and Robert Vink on the history and future of neuroscience in the state. I congratulate Nick and his colleagues on organising such an outstanding event.

In those states with a large number of ANS members, the state representative on Council may not know many of the members personally, and vice-versa, particularly if the members are spread over many universities and institutes. Council has been encouraging the formation of state committees to promote state-based neuroscience activities and Joanne Britto has got the ball rolling in Victoria. The Victorian Committee has representatives from the University of Melbourne, Monash University, the Howard Florey Institute, the Brain Research Institute, the Mental Health Research Institute of Victoria and the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute.

On 1^st September, I had the chance to talk about some of these issues with young neuroscientists in Victoria when I was invited by Rogan Tinsley and Toby Merson to meet with the committee members of the Postdoctoral Association of the Howard Florey Institute (PAHFI). Toby has written a short article for this newsletter explaining how PAHFI looks after the interests of postdocs, who are a vital part of neuroscience research but have not historically been given a separate voice. I am also grateful to Toby and PAHFI for organising and funding the inaugural Early-Career Researchers’ Function at the 2008 Hobart Meeting; this will be repeated at the 2009 Canberra Meeting, with sponsorship from HFI, QBI, Scientifix and ANS.

NeuroSciences Australia. While quite a few ANS members will be aware of the new initiative being developed by NeuroSciences Australia (NSA) to greatly expand targeted funding for research on disorders of the brain, many members may be unaware of even the existence of NSA. Consequently I have asked Peter Schofield to contribute an article for this newsletter on NSA and its initiative. Although NSA may be confused with ANS because of the unfortunate similarity in their names, there are fundamental differences in the goals of the two organisations. ANS exists to serve all neuroscientists and all neuroscience research in Australia and New Zealand; NSA is in the business of picking winners in neuroscience research. The goals are not necessarily incompatible and, indeed, in this era of plurality of neuroscience funding in Australia, there is room for different approaches to neuroscience representation and funding. Unlike the situation in the USA with the Society for Neuroscience, the professional representation of basic and clinical neuroscientists in Australia is rather fragmented, making it difficult for ANS to speak on behalf of the neurologists and psychiatrists, for example.

While NSA has been kind enough to invite me to attend their Board Meetings in a non-voting capacity, I have yet to come to a conclusion as to the merits of the initiative being pursued by NSA. Moreover, ANS Council has not formally discussed whether ANS would formally support an initiative, waiting for more concrete proposals to come from the working parties being established by NSA. The Officers and Council members will be guided in this matter by the views of the ANS membership. However, this is certainly not an us-vs-them situation: two-thirds of the 85 neuroscience leaders attending the NSA Workshop at the Garvan Institite on 22^nd August were members of ANS, including the President, Past-President and Secretary of ANS. I think that most people who attended the Workshop were impressed by the great goodwill of the participants. This gives strength to the belief that, even if the NSA initiative does not achieve its stated goal of a quantal increase in research funding for disorders of the brain, the process itself will have lasting benefit for neuroscience in this country.

Australian Neuroscience Society