The Community Neuroscience Initiative (CNI) held its first Community Neuroscience Celebration in Syracuse on May 19 and 20. The celebration honored the impact of women and non-binary scientists and leaders and stressed the importance of their community-focused neuroscience work.
The event included talks from neuroscience luminaries and faculty who shared ideas about how making neuroscience more accessible can improve lives and how acceptance of neurodiversity can be beneficial for everyone. Speakers also shared lessons learned while building their careers with the attendees, some who were women and non-binary graduate students or postdocs working in neuroscience. These populations are underrepresented in neuroscience, said Marlen Z. Gonzalez, director of CNI and assistant professor of psychology in Cornell Human Ecology.
“There’s a lot of inequality in neuroscience,” said Gonzalez. “About 50% of graduate students in neuroscience are women but it starts to dwindle as you move further in your career. For women of color and underrepresented groups, the numbers are even smaller.”
Attendees particiapte in group discussion at the Community Neuroscience Celebration held in Syracuse by the Community Neuroscience Initiative. (Photo credit: Juan Vazquez-Leddon)
Also in attendance were women and non-binary leaders in education, public policy, and community organizations, key partners CNI works with for its translational research work. The initiative is part of the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research
“The CNI’s mission is to democratize neuroscience”, said Gonzalez. “We have neuroscientists that do human work, some doing molecular animal work, and some that are doing clinical work. It’s a varied group but everyone has the same thing in mind — how do we make neuroscience more accessible and meaningful? That’s why we are all here.”
Two speakers received inaugural awards from CNI.
Frances Colón, senior director for international climate policy at the Center for American Progress, received the Community Neuroscience Luminary Award. Colón trained as a neuroscientist and shared her path from doctoral work ‘at the bench’ to her current work in science advocacy and policy. She spoke about the importance of working with communities, which she started doing while pursuing her Ph.D. at Brandeis University, and continued throughout her career. Colón was a policy fellow in the State Department guiding U.S. relations with other countries on issues like public health, climate change and advancing women in science. She also worked with South Florida’s Latino community to advocate for beneficial climate change policies. She became a go-to science voice on Spanish-language television and radio programs during the COVID-19 pandemic, a task she said was important because she understood those were the mediums that the Latino community relied on for information every day, and she was able to provide them with COVID-19 information they could understand.
“It was helping to make the science accessible and putting it in the hands of the people — the moms and dads, the abuelita, the people that were listening,” Colón said. “They were really scared and didn’t understand what was happening. Many times, the information wasn’t coming in the language or context they needed.”
Elizabeth Riley, a research associate with the Affect and Cognition Lab, received the Community Neuroscience Emerging Scholar Luminary Award. Riley’s research focuses on the locus coeruleus, a site in the brain that releases norepinephrine, and it affects on cognitive aging. Riley described five steps to practicing community neuroscience: do good science, take care of your team, serve the larger community, zoom out (think about things in a larger context), and share creatively. She put those in context with her current Alzheimer’s disease research, including sharing how her team thought about partnering with community leaders who could help recruit a diverse pool of study participants and sharing data results with them, including the joy they may have in participating in the solution.
“You should be able to tell them what you found [and] why it matters” said Riley. “They just want to do something because they care about this. They come to us, get involved, and they can feel like they’ve done something that’s taking this in the right direction.”
Another overarching theme of the celebration was mental health and self-care. Sará King, a postdoctoral fellow at the T. Denny Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion in Human Health and Social Justice at the University of California, San Diego, touched on need for support systems, creating a sense of belonging, work-life balance, and combating burnout and microaggressions among those in academia. King spoke on how mindfulness practices, like CNI’s ROOTS (Reclaiming Our Time, Our Selves, and Space) program for teachers, can help, but stressed changes in work environments can be beneficial.
“There’s a matter of personal responsibility and accountability in terms of how we’re attending to our well-being, but what does institutional accountability and actions looks like,” said King. “That can help my own well-being and capacity to spread and democratize neuroscience research.”
The event also engaged attendees in conversations around neurodiversity and neuroinclusivity and their importance in research and career development. Maureen Dunne, a cognitive scientist who is a CNI advisory board member and is the neurodiversity expert for the LEGO Foundation, said having neurodivergent people as part of your staff and leadership can unearth new and creative ways of thinking, but they also need support.
“It’s so important that on our campuses and in our schools that they can find support, someone to go to and feel accepted and appreciated,“ Dunne said.
And a strong support system can catalyze student success, said Eve De Rosa, dean of faculty and Mibs Martin Follett Professor in Human Ecology. Making accommodations and support for neurodivergent people are investments for all and can help destigmatize neurodiversity.
“There are certain accommodations that have been universally accepted and appreciated by all, like closed captioning and curb cuts,” De Rosa said. “When building accommodations, build them, so that everyone benefits.”
