Donors Enable 445 TPDA Awards to Neuroscience 2024
CHICAGO – The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) is supporting 445 neuroscience trainees to attend Neuroscience 2024, SfN’s annual meeting and the world’s largest gathering of neuroscientists, through the Trainee Professional Development Award (TPDA) program. Over $560,000 in generous donations — the largest amount raised for this program — 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.
“SfN is delighted to support these competitively selected TPDA awardees to benefit from the unparallelled opportunities at Neuroscience 2024 to present research, build career connections, and hone professional skills,” said Michael Lehman, PhD, TPDA program chair. “The TPDA program enables so many young neuroscientists to attend their first SfN annual meeting, where they can experience the potent intermingling of people and ideas that can spark the next breakthrough in their field. This award program would not be possible if not for the consistent generosity of the program’s donors.”
The TPDA program provides funding support to promising undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to participate in Neuroscience 2024, followed by year-long access to a variety of SfN’s virtual professional development resources. The 2024 TPDA recipients comprise the highest representation of non-U.S. trainees selected for the program, accounting for 26% of awardees. Almost two-thirds of awardees are female and more than 40% are from diverse racial and ethnic populations.
Donors to the 2024 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 BrightFocus Foundation, Rainwater Charitable Foundation, Developmental Studies Hybridoma Bank (DSHB), and Science Translational Medicine/AAAS contributed funding this year. The Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute contributed support to four joint TPDA/Chen Science Writers Fellowship awards, in which 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 2024 experiences.
Additional 2024 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. The James L. Roberts Fund was made possible by a new bequest to SfN in early 2024 in memory of James L. Roberts, a 37-year member of SfN. 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 reached a record total of $73,500 raised for the 2024 TPDA program, including generous contributions raised by family members and colleagues in memory of Dr. Ehud (Udi) Kaplan, a visual neuroscientist with a long career at Rockefeller University, Mt. Sinai Medical School, and Charles University.
To learn more about how to support the TPDA program, visit the SfN website or contact development@sfn.org.
The Society for Neuroscience (SfN) is an organization of nearly 35,000 basic scientists and clinicians who study the brain and the nervous system.
