Presentation of all German BCCNs at the Society for Neuroscience Conference, Washington DC, 2005

More than 34.000 visitors from all over the world participated in the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting in Washington 2005. The German BCCNs took this opportunity to introduce themselves to the international neuroscience community (November 2005).

Along with countless exhibitions of companies and non-profit organizations, the German BCCNs were the only network of German research centers that presented itself in this event. Accordingly, its presentation evoked a lot of curiosity and surprise. "What are you advertising here?" was a question frequently posed by the visitors. When the representatives of the BCCNs started to explain about their centers and the new research and education opportunities that they offer, that curiosity transformed regularly in profound interest. "That's a wonderful chance for Germany. I wish we had these opportunities in our country!" was a frequent reaction.

In that sense, this presentation certainly succeeded in putting Germany onto the mental map of many people that were not yet familiar with computational neuroscience in Germany. On top of that, many researchers got interested in the new teaching and training opportunities being set up in the BCCNs.