December 15, 2017
As part of strategic effort to create awareness about the growing Brain and Spinal Cord Injury community on campus, and to foster relationships among researchers in this area, the Purdue Institute of Integrative Neuroscience (PIIN) inaugurated a “Brain and Spinal Cord Injury Seminar Series” in the Fall of 2017. We kicked off the first season of seminars with eight outstanding speakers from four different colleges at Purdue: Vet Med, Engineering, Science, and Pharmacy. Over 100 PIIN members attended one or more of the seminars. As such, this platform achieved its intended initial goal of community building. These events harnessed the keen interests of its participants and allowed Purdue researchers to exchange scientific ideas related to post-injury pain and other functional deficits of the nervous system. The consensus of this community is that we have strong, multidisciplinary expertise in CNS trauma at Purdue. A major goal for next semester’s seminar series is to facilitate collaborative activities leading to extramural support.
In addition to continuing the seminar series in the area of CNS injury, the PIIN leadership team is actively seeking to support additional inter-disciplinary research groups with common interests in emerging topics in neuroscience. By meeting regularly, Purdue research teams brought together with PIIN support will be more competitive and better prepared to respond quickly to major funding opportunities, with the eventual goal of producing impactful breakthroughs in the discovery and innovative technologies.
