- Good morning.
It is my pleasure to welcome all of you
to the Annual Scientific Symposium
of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute here at Stanford.
This is an annual celebration for us,
a celebration of science.
It's an occasion for gratitude for the outstanding speakers
who have joined us today.
And it's an opportunity to strengthen our community
in a unique new format at a unique time.
And I'm going to start simply by stating the obvious
which some people say is what I do best.
This has been one hell of a year.
It is difficult now to remember where we were
as a community a year ago.
At the time of our last symposium in October, 2019
we were looking forward to an unprecedented year
of opportunity for neuroscience at Stanford
including dedicating
the new Stanford neurosciences building,
moving 18 laboratories into it
and creating several new community labs
that would serve the entire campus neuroscience community
and become a hub of creativity
and dissemination of cutting edge technologies.
Little did we know!
In March only a month after a beautiful building dedication
on February 11th, the magnitude of the COVID crisis
crashed in on us with shelter in place orders
from Santa Clara County and the state of California
and the emptying of our campus.
And one of the greatest ironies in my life,
my first duty upon moving into the building,
which I and many others had worked on for six years
was to shut it down.
Then, beginning in may,
we were able to slowly and cautiously reopen
putting health and safety first at all times.
Many of us faced and are still facing new complexities
as we try to school children at home
while juggling demanding jobs.
And as if these challenges were not enough
we all experienced a clarion call
to action on racial justice issues
that emerged from tragic events in several of our cities
in the spring, making it clear that we as a nation
and as a local neuroscience community
have unfinished business to engage
in this exceedingly important arena.
And layered on top of all of this,
our national political situation
has added stress and anxiety for most of us.
The beautiful building dedication ceremony
in February now seems like three years ago,
literally not eight months
but as we have ridden this roller coaster together
for the past eight months
there've been so many concrete instances of fortitude
and hope for which I am so deeply grateful to all of you.
Your gallantry and your seriousness of purpose
in shutting down the very scientific activity
that we love most, I've seen that in spades.
You're puckish good humor and faithful cooperation
as the weeks of shutting down turned into months
has been remarkable.
Your determination to make the time count
by getting on with the science despite the obstacles
and your care for each other during these difficult times
have all impressed me far more than I can tell you.
I really enjoy my tours around the building most days
and seeing the young people, especially the students,
post-docs, the staff who are carrying on with science
that in a very difficult time.
And I admire those of you who cannot come onto campus
and yet are working hard to carry on the science remotely.
I can honestly say that I am admire and I'm deeply grateful
for the grace and the courage and the tenacity
that all of you have shown during this trying time.
Thanks to all of you.
This has been a testament to the strength of our community
but I do believe that the best is yet to come
for our community.
I don't think any of us are kidding ourselves.
There will be more trying times for us in the coming year
but I'm confident that we can weather them
and come out on the other side a year or so from now
as stronger, more focused people
with the greater clarity of purpose
for our lives and for our careers
and we will make that journey together.
Other generations before us
have faced their own great challenges and met them,
we can rise to the great challenges of our own generation
which are in front of us now.
All of this brings us to this day in October of 2020,
the Seventh Annual Symposium
of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute.
Our theme this year is the neurobiology of disease
and we have a sterling set of six speakers teed up here,
ready and eager to go.
We have three distinguished guests from outside Stanford,
Michael Kahana from Penn,
Amy Bastian of Johns Hopkins
and Walter Koroshetz the Director of the National Institute
of Neurological Diseases and Stroke.
And then we have three outstanding speakers
from inside Stanford,
Michelle Monje from the Department of Neurology
and Neurological Sciences, Professor Karen Parker
who's from the Department of Psychiatry
and Professor Todd Coleman who's currently at UCSD
but will be joining our bioengineering faculty next July.
These speakers will report their latest results
on the neurobiology of disease from molecular analysis
of brain tumor mechanisms
all the way to neuro engineering approaches
to stroke recovery and to gastrointestinal diagnosis.
In addition, we will have a virtual poster session
that features our students and post-docs
and our Annual Sammy Quo Awards for the outstanding papers
from our post-docs and grad students in the past year.
The poster session is something I would like to highlight.
We will use a small group meeting software tool
from the company Gather.
I have been boning up on that this week
and I encourage all of you to experiment with this
and come to the poster session.
It may well be the best model
for realistic scientific encounter in conversation
in the coming year that allows people to move around
the way you would at a natural poster session
and converse in small groups and bump into people
and talk to people.
So I really call out that poster session that happens
right after lunch and invite all of you to attend.
I will see you there.
So we are honored to have these speakers today
and I am eagerly anticipating their talks.
Before beginning the symposium
we pause for a,
I think it's appropriate pause for a public recognition
that Stanford sits on the ancestral and unceded lands
of the Muwekma Ohlone tribe.
This land was and continues to be
of great importance to the Ohlone people.
Consistent with our values of community and diversity
and cognizant of the current moment in our nation's history
we gladly acknowledge honor and make visible
the university's relationship to native peoples.
And now without further ado,
I'm going to turn the platform over
to Professor Marion Buckwalter
of the Departments of Neurology and Neurosurgery
who took the lead in planning this symposium today
and will introduce our first speaker.
Marion is a clinical scientist
whose research focuses on stroke
and stroke recovery mechanisms.
She serves ably on the Wu Tsai executive committee
and I'm so grateful for her dedicated efforts
on the EXCOMM and in bringing this symposium together.
So Marion over to you and off we go.