New Year message from Professor Barry Everitt F.R.S., President of FENS

The Founding Charter was signed at the first FENS Forum in Berlin in 1998 by the presidents of national neuroscience societies and the European Brain and Behaviour Society. Coincidently, this oldest of European neuroscience societies is celebrating its 50^th anniversary in 2018.

The 11^th FENS Forum in Berlin will be a wonderful celebration of neuroscience research.  Registration and abstract submission for the Forum are open and I encourage you all to present and showcase your research and to enjoy a superb, international programme of plenary and special lectures as well as highly contemporary symposia.

FENS has achieved much during the last 20 years and has assumed a leading role in training neuroscientists through the Cajal courses in Bordeaux and Champalimaud (in partnership with IBRO and the Gatsby Charitable Trust). Each year FENS holds a summer and a winter school (in partnership with the Hertie Foundation and SfN), and undertakes extensive advocacy for neuroscience through the European Brain Council of which former FENS president Monica di Luca has just been elected president.  Partnership with the Lundbeck Foundation underlies the highly successful biannual Brain Conferences as well as celebrations of the Brain Prize at the Forum. The FENS regional meetings in non-Forum years are an established and highly attractive part of the neuroscience calendar; the meeting in Pécs hosted by the Hungarian Neuroscience Society in September 2017 attracted over 900 participants and was an enormous success.  Now our eyes are focused on the next FENS Forum in July where we are expecting at least 7,000 neuroscientists in a wonderful celebration of 20 years of shared accomplishments.

You are automatically a member of FENS if you belong to your national neuroscience society or one of our member European neuroscience societies (the complete list can be found here). Your membership of these societies affords you a wide range of benefits that include significantly reduced registration fees to attend the FENS Forum and Cajal courses, as well as the opportunity to apply for travel bursaries to attend both. Do join or renew your membership of your society and plan to join your friends and colleagues from Europe and across the world at what is sure to be an exceptional, 20^th anniversary neuroscience Forum in the wonderful city of Berlin. 

We at FENS wish you a joyous and successful New Year.

Professor Barry Everitt F.R.S., President of FENS