Highlights from Neuroscience 2025: Community and Collaboration

Convenings and community-building are important complements to the Dana Foundation’s grantmaking efforts to advance a human-centered paradigm shift for neuroscience. These events take place throughout the year, and fall is an especially opportune time to meet around the annual Society for Neuroscience (SfN) conference.

This year’s SfN meeting took place in San Diego in November, where neuroscientists and multidisciplinary scholars and practitioners at every career stage gather to exchange ideas, deepen connections, and reflect on the future of the field. Both before and during the meeting, Dana Foundation staff members took the opportunity to connect with grantees, partners, and others engaged in our mission at the intersection of neuroscience and society.

Fresh off a whirlwind week in California, we’d like to share a few highlights from our recent activities.

Dana Center Initiative Annual Meeting

The Dana Foundation team hosted the Dana Center Initiative (DCI) grantees in Santa Monica for the second annual DCI Grantee Meeting. Our four partners—UCLA-CDU Dana Center for Neuroscience & Society, Loyola University Chicago Dana Program for Neuroscience & Society, and Neurotech Justice Accelerator at Mass General Brigham —collectively work to advance a model of neuroscience that integrates societal goals and community values into research.

This year’s meeting provided an opportunity for the DCI community to reconnect, share progress across sites, and identify areas for deeper collaboration. Throughout the day, leaders and trainees from each site engaged in discussions on topics such as the current landscape of science, strategies for strengthening the community of neuroscience and society scholars and practitioners, challenges inherent in interdisciplinary work, and effective approaches to mentoring trainees.

A sense of opportunity around growing the neuroscience and society community carried through the day. Much of the discussion centered on the need to create a “porosity of boundaries” across the field—opening space for stronger connections among people and institutions committed to interdisciplinary neuroscience. Attendees echoed this theme as they shared stories about the “rippling impact of this work,” from reshaping how neuroscience is practiced to preparing the next generation of researchers in new ways.

Society for Neuroscience Brain Awareness Campaign Event

Public outreach and engagement have been longstanding interests of the Dana Foundation, most notably through the launch and continued support for Brain Awareness Week. For more than two decades, the SfN meeting has included a Brain Awareness Campaign Event, representing the well-established partnership between SfN and the Dana Foundation, as well as the emphasis on connecting neuroscience and the public.

The annual event at the meeting showcases global efforts to engage the public in neuroscience. It provides an opportunity to reflect on events from Brain Awareness Week 2025, celebrate the winners of competitions like the Brain Awareness Week Video Contest and the International Brain Bee, and hear directly from a guest speaker on their experience with public outreach.

The session also featured a wide range of posters highlighting the creativity and commitment behind brain awareness initiatives. Neurobridges: Connecting Brains and Boricuas showcased how researchers are expanding pathways into neuroscience for Puerto Rican students through outreach efforts, including Neurociencia en Arroz Y Habichuelas, an educational booklet developed with support from a Brain Awareness Week grant. Manuella Yassa, Ph.D., one of the booklet’s creators and a recipient of a Science Educator Award this year at SfN, shared that the team’s next step is translating the resource into additional Spanish dialects and other languages to reach even more students.

The student-run International Youth Neuroscience Organization (IYNA), recipient of this year’s SfN Next Generation Award, presented an overview of its growing portfolio of programs designed to connect, educate, and inspire future neuroscientists. Through its journal, chapter network, summer course, and popular Neuro& webinar series, IYNA continues to offer aspiring neuroscientists, ranging from high schoolers to undergraduates, a plethora of opportunities to learn and engage.

As the brain awareness event moved into its featured presentation, attendees heard from Jacopo Annese, Ph.D., who is the founder of the Brain Observatory and the Human Brain Library in San Diego.

The Dana Foundation continues to support Brain Awareness Week through global partnerships with FENS and IBRO, as part of our recognition that science outreach underlies our refined mission pillars focused on education, next-generation training, and bidirectional public engagement.

Third Annual Neuroscience & Society Reception

The Neuroscience & Society Reception aims to foster connections between early-career neuroscientists and cross-disciplinary mentors. By building a community through networks, the Dana Foundation hopes to guide the next generation of neuroscientists through interdisciplinary career paths. This year we were pleased to welcome more than 150 attendees.

Sixteen-year-old Kayla Roh, a high-school student and aspiring neuroscientist, joined Dana Foundation Chairman Steve Hyman and President Caroline Montojo to provide welcoming remarks. Kayla is actively engaged in neuroscience research and student engagement initiatives. She took the opportunity to speak about the important role mentors have played in guiding her scientific interests:

“I became interested in neuroscience and society through—very much in the spirit of this event—continued mentorship from people…who have helped me with research, have helped me in education and outreach programs, and [shown me] what it means to be a professional neuroscientist today.”

The reception created a space for people to openly converse, connect, and share what drew them into neuroscience and society, reminding us how these conversations help shape the journeys of future neuroscientists.