Computational Neuroscience meeting

[Christiane Linster]

Dear colleagues
At this summer's annual Computational Neuroscience (CNS) meeting held in
Chicago, the decision was made to form a CNS organization to administer
future meetings.  The purpose of this e-mail is to solicit nominations for a
15 member board of directors for the organization. Overall policy for the
organization will be set by the board and a 4 member executive committee.
Board members will serve 5 year terms and may be re-elected. Executive
officers serve an initial 2 year term, renewable annually by a simple
majority vote of the board. After 5 years, a 2/3 majority will be needed to
continue. The scientific program for each meeting will be set by a separate
program committee.  For details, the current draft of the bylaws (to be
confirmed by the initial board) is available for viewing at
www.nbb.cornell.edu/neurobio/linster/cns/cns.htm.

Nominations are open to all members of the computational neuroscience
community (including students and postdocs).  All nominations should be
accompanied by a brief (1-3 paragraph) statement outlining the candidate's
past affiliation with the meeting and/or vision for the future direction of
the meeting. Self-nominations are accepted.  Please send nominations by
e-mail to Christane Linster at CL243 at cornell.edu by November 15th, 2002.
After receiving a complete list of nominees, board members will be elected
by the current program committee (held over from the previous meeting
structure) and the executive committee.  The initial term of service for
elected board members will be set at 1-5 years by lottery.  This will ensure
that in the future roughly equal numbers of board positions will open up for
annual election.

The main considerations for selecting board members will be diversity and
continuity.  It is expected that board members will have attended at least
one CNS meeting in the past and will have some familiarity with the scope
and tone of previous meetings.  We anticipate that a number of changes will
come up for discussion in the next few years, but feel that it is important
to retain continuity until the new governing structure is established and
working smoothly.  That said, we are quite open to new ideas and obtaining
new contributing voices will be an important consideration in forming a
diverse board.  Other forms of diversity that will be considered include:
level of professional advancement (faculty, postdoc student), "home"
discipline (e.g. math, biology, physics, engineering), level of analysis
(e.g. cellular, network, systems), geographic location, and gender.

Finally, we encourage any and all opinions regarding the future direction of
the CNS meeting and the role that it should play in the field of
computational neuroscience.  Now is a particularly important time to voice
your opinion since the direction of the meeting over the next 5-10 years
will likely be formed within the next several years (CL243 at cornell.edu).  We
hope to keep CNS as a lively inclusive meeting while striving for continued
improvement in scientific quality.

 Sincerely,

 The CNS executive committee:

Christiane Linster - President

Todd Troyer - Vice President

Eric DeSchutter - Secretary

Linda Larson-Prior - Treasurer

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Christiane Linster
Dept. of Neurobiology and Behavior     Tel: (607) 2544331
Cornell University                                  Fax: (607)254 4308
W249 Seeley G. Mudd Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853
cl243 at cornell.edu
http://www.nbb.cornell.edu/neurobio/linster
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