Category: Advisory Board

Society for Neuroscience Redux

Thirty thousand plus neuroscientists will be leaving Washington today to head home. My sense is that it was an extraordinarily successful meeting in that there was a lot of serious new science to report.

The photo was taken just outside the DC convention center yesterday as neuroscientists headed towards China Town and its many restaurants. For those readers who enjoy my various complaints about Blackboard, you’ll note its corporate headquarters (brown building to the left).

Today back at Krasnow we have an advisory board meeting that will take up the morning. The Board is a terrific group of distinguished individuals who have given enormously to the Institute over the years, both materially and in terms of collective wisdom.

For that we are very grateful. Over the next year, the Board will be entering a new phase, which I’ll put out as a teaser. I hope to write more about that soon.

In the meantime, we’re looking forward to a very busy remainder of the week, and a Thanksgiving holiday that’s not too far off.

The Institute Advisory Board

Tomorrow the Institute’s Advisory Board will gather for its regular Spring meeting. These individuals play a crucial role in providing me with strategic advice. Even more importantly the board members have, through their gifts, made much of the scientific discovery at Krasnow possible.

And scientific discovery is ultimately the purpose of the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study. The other day I was tasked with creating a new Institute mission statement for the upcoming re- accreditation process whereby George Mason is reaffirmed as a university. That’s worth thinking very carefully about–because behind the words, there has to be something measurable. To my mind, this measurable thing has to be scientific discovery. That is the creation of new knowledge about the natural world within the context of “mind” research.
Tomorrow I’ll ask the Advisory Board to join me in the work of creating this new mission statement: one that places discovery at the central point of our work.
Jim