Neuroscientists from the United States and Cuba gathered at the Hotel Nacional in Havana Oct. 19-23 and took a significant step toward enhancing scientific dialogue between the two countries. Their meeting featured 25 American speakers and a similar number of Cuban presenters, as well as representatives of U.S. pharmaceutical companies, Cuban students, and politicians from both nations.
The purpose of the Havana gathering, organized as a satellite conference to the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting in Miami Oct. 23-28, was to establish connections that could lead to further scientific exchanges. Organizers envision a program of postdoctoral fellowships in America for young Cuban scientists along with other opportunities for senior U.S. scientists to lecture in Cuba.
Mark M. Rasenick, a physiology and biophysics and psychiatry professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), was coprincipal organizer of the meeting with UIC psychiatry professor Moises F. Gaviria and University of Massachusetts ...
