Dear EBBS friends and colleagues,

Now that my term as EBBS President is almost half-way - runs from July 2010 to July 2012- I would like to update you on several exciting EBBS activities.

First, I would like to remind you that registration is now open for our upcoming meeting this September in Seville, Spain. This year’s meeting promises to be particularly outstanding, with a remarkable program including 14 symposia covering some of the most exciting topics currently in the field of brain-behavior interactions, and 8 top internationally prominent scientists (Alan Cowey, Elizabeth Phelps, May-Britt Moser, Francisco Rubia, Barbara Sahakian, Yadin Dudai, Tania Singer and Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg) offering the keynote lectures.

A new very important addition for this meeting will be a Special Symposium in which the 6 winners of the Young Investigators Awards will present their work. This is a particularly important new activity in our society that has made a special commitment to support the careers of those younger scientists with strong interest in progressing in the understanding of brain and behavior. I hope you will all join me in my enthusiasm for this new initiative and help to promote it for this upcoming edition and future ones. Another new addition for our meeting will be a discussion session on career opportunities and current methods for career assessment that promises to be both polemic and inspiring.

For these reasons, and because the local committee chaired by Agnes Gruart has put together an amazing social program and infrastructure, I strongly recommend anyone who has not yet done it to register and join the EBBS meeting in Seville, from September 9-12^th 2011 (http://www.ebbs-seville2011.com/index.php/welcome).

I would also like to encourage you, more generally, to help us strengthening the goals and visibility of our society. As you know, the EBBS mission is to support and promote work that advances our understanding of brain-behavior interactions. You can let me or the other committee members know your ideas, with particularly good occasions being the AGM meetings that take place annually, either during the EBBS or during the FENS meetings.

Importantly, there are already a number of opportunities available that can also fit these purposes. I would like to emphasize the “EBBS sponsored International Lecturers”, a mechanism that allows organizers of a local or national meeting or workshop to get financial support to defray the additional costs of a lecturer from another country. I can only recommend you to apply for it if you are organizing a relevant meeting in our field – I did it myself recently in a Symposium I organized in mid-March and the possibility of inviting a prominent scientist from the USA was a clear asset to the meeting. You can find the relevant details in the website.

…and just in case you have not yet discovered it, EBBS is now in Facebook!

Please note that the Call for Nominations for various EBBS council members (including the President and Secretary positions) has been sent recently. I urge you to take part in this important process to ensure that our Society continues to grow and thrive. Remember to vote whenever the invitation comes!

Finally, I hope to keep a dialogue with those of you who would like to join efforts to promote the EBBS’s goals. Particularly, I look forward to seeing all of you in Seville in September for what promises to be an exciting and outstanding meeting!

Best Regards,

Carmen Sandi

President, EBBS

April 26. 2011