Making the Most of Your International Experience

William Daniels is the dean and the head of the school of laboratory medicine and medical sciences at the University of Kwazulu-Natal in South Africa. His research interests are mainly in behavioral neuroscience and using animal models to study the pathophysiology of psychiatric and neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. Daniels has been a member of numerous professional societies including the Society of Neuroscientists of Africa, the Society for Neuroscience, and served on the South African National Committee for IBRO.

Joseph Whittaker is the dean of the school of computer, mathematical and natural sciences and a professor at Morgan State University. He is actively engaged in the development of international research collaborations as well as faculty and student exchange programs in Finland, South Africa, Puerto Rico, Bermuda, and Jamaica. He has been a member of numerous scientific review panels and committees at the National Science Foundation, Academy of Sciences, and Institute of Health.

Desire Tshala-Katumbay is an expert in tropical neurology and neuro-epidemiology, clinical neurotoxicology, and experimental neurotoxicolgy. Tshala-Katumbay has worked with international academic institutions to address issues related to biomedical research in resource-limited, sub-Saharan Africa. Tshala-Katumbay is involved in the International Brain Research Organization and lectures on neuroscience topics and mentors students with interest in global partnership in sciences.

Michael Zigmond is a professor in the department of neurology at the University of Pittsburgh. Michael’s research using cellular and animal models of Parkinson’s disease has helped to reveal the intricacies of the relationship between stress, exercise, and trophic factors on the survival of dopamine neurons. He is particularly interested in the strategies dopamine neurons use to reduce their vulnerability to intracellular stress. Michael earned his PhD from the University of Chicago. Michael is also well known for his “Survival Skills and Ethics” workshops and publications, which offer professional skill development and ethical issue training for early career scientists. Through these workshops and extensive mentoring activities, he has mentored many female scientists who have gone on to lead distinguished careers in neuroscience.

Shigang He is a distinguished professor and doctoral supervisor in the school of life sciences and biotechnology and the institute of natural sciences at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He is a recipient of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholar and One-Hundred-Person Project. Shigang concurrently serves as the secretary general and member of executive counsel of the Chinese Society for Neuroscience, member of executive counsel of the Biophysical Society of China, and executive editor of Acta Biophysica Sinica. Shigang received his PhD in neuroscience from the Australian National University. Between 1994 and 1997, he was a research associate/research fellow at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Harvard Medical School. From 1997 to 1999, he was an NH&MRC senior research fellow at University of Queensland’s Vision Touch and Hearing Research Centre. From 1999 to 2004, he was a research fellow at the laboratory of retinal structure and function at the Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Shigang was a research fellow at the institute of biophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences from 2005 to 2011. Shigang’s laboratory aims to understand a broad range of biological systems specifically, including the mechanism of signal processing and circuitry formation in brains by using mammalian retina as a model system, the regulation and developmental changes in the dendritic structure of retinal ganglion cells, and the mechanism of processing of visual signals for motion direction.

Viji Ravindranath earned her BSc and MSc degrees from Andhra University and PhD in biochemistry from Mysore University while working at Central Food Technology Research Institute (CFTRI). She was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute and joined the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) at Bangalore. She continued working in various capacities at NIMHANS until 2000 when she took over as the founder director of the National Brain Research Centre (NBRC), an autonomous institute of the department of biotechnology. She continued as director until 2009, when she became professor and chair of the newly created Centre for Neuroscience at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. Viji has made pioneering contributions in understanding the metabolism of psychoactive drugs at the site of action in brain.

Laura Colgin, PhD, served as the 2024 SfN Program Committee chair and is a neuroscience professor and director of the Center for Learning and Memory at The University of Texas at Austin. Her laboratory employs multisite neurophysiological recordings in behaving rats to study neuronal and network mechanisms of learning and memory and how these mechanisms are disrupted in cognitive disorders.