Signal Processing in Neurons

In recent years the neuroscience community in Innsbruck has seen strong and sustained growth with the appointment of seven university professors at Innsbruck Medical University: L. Klimaschewski in 1999; C. Bandtlow in 2000; G. Dechant in 2002; A. Hüttenhofer, H.-G. Knaus, M. Kress in 2003; and G. Wenning in 2006. Their newly established laboratories share a scientific focus on molecular and cellular processes in the healthy and diseased nervous system and are distinguished by broadly overlapping research interests. Together with the already established successful study groups of the Department of Neurology (represented by M. Reindl), the Institute of Pharmacology (represented by C. Schwarzer) and the Institute of Pharmacy (represented by N. Singewald) of the Leopold-Franzens University Innsbruck, we have reached international visibility, which has placed Innsbruck in a unique and favorable position within Austria. To keep up the current momentum of the development of Innsbruck`s neuroscience community, we have teamed up in a consortium to create the Doktoratskolleg (DK) "Signal Processing in Neurons" (SPIN). We are confident that we will provide an outstanding and highly coordinated training experience for outstanding international and national students that will serve as a springboard to scientific excellence. SPIN will strengthen our ongoing efforts to integrate our training and research activities, whereby the DK will raise the research and training profile of Innsbruck Medical University for many years to come. SPIN was set up to allow multidisciplinary interactions at the precise interface of molecular and clinical neuroscience. Work in SPIN is motivated by the belief that analyzing cellular communication and signaling pathways is an essential prerequisite of understanding both normal and altered functions of the human brain. With our innovative and rigorously interdisciplinary experimental program we aim at reaching a new level of understanding of the fundamental integrative processes that govern the signaling within and between nerve cells under normal and pathological conditions. The cutting-edge science jointly conducted by the SPIN network will not only cross-fertilize our research and pave the way to new modes of diagnosis and therapy in neuroscience. It will also form the background for training conditions that encourage maximal rotation of students. Taken together SPIN offers a fantastic opportunity for an elite of students to prepare themselves for meeting the challenges of their future employment in academic, industrial or clinical environments.