European Pain School: Molecular Mechanisms of Pain Response, Italy, 13-20/06/09

European Pain School: Molecular Mechanisms of Pain Response

PENS – PARTIALLY SUPPORTED SCHOOL, June 13 - 20, 2009
Siena, Italy

Application Deadline: 2009-02-28

Aims and Scope
The idea of founding an European Pain School was first conceived in 1994, when Anna Maria Aloisi, Giancarlo Carli and Manfred Zimmermann met for a Symposium at the Certosa di Pontignano, a most atmospheric 16th century monastery in the Chianti region, now a Conference Center of the University of Siena. In 2002 we could convince FENS, the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies, to give our project the status of a FENS School, including financial resources for our start up in 2003. In our announcement we aimed at giving young scholars a place of transnational scientific interaction in the field of pain science, a branch of increasing recent interest in the plethora of biomedicine.
Finally 40 Scholars were elected, with nearly half of them from Eastern Europe, and 15 Faculty. All of us were thrilled by the novel experience of spending 24 hours together, Scholars and Faculty, from early morning exercise in the cloisters to midnight talks and drinks in the Sala Focolare. In between we had a rich day of listening and talking to the experts, with discussion extending to the large round ta-bles in the Cloisters were we enjoyed Lunches and Dinners in the traditions of Toscana, including lo-cal wines from vineyards owned by the University of Siena.
During all of the week we were living somehow in the tradition of the medieval monastery, changing our habits of academic communication: for a short while we abandoned the spatiotemporal distance of pulpit and classroom schedule and went into the structure of a scientific family, with affective compo-nents fostering the transfer of concepts and facts in science, in pain science.

Registration and Stipends
Young scientists at PhD or postdoctoral levels in all fields of biomedical or clinical pain research are invited to apply.

Up to 30 scholars can enrol in this school. It provides:
- Lectures by faculty
- Oral presentations by scholars
- Seminars jointly organised by faculty and scholar
- Seminar on ethics of pain research

Topics
Pain genotypes and phenotypes; Molecular biology of analgesia; Peripheral nerves and immune system; Neuropathic pain mechanisms and ion channel dysfunction; CNS pain processes and disinhibition; Neuropsychological pain amplifi cation; Molecular neuroimaging of pain.

For more information, visit the website: http://fens.mdc-berlin.de/pens/2009/schools/read.php?id=25&action=showOrganizers