Tracy L. Bale, Ph.D.

Program Committee Chair

Sarah Timm, CAE, CMP-HC

ACNP Executive Director

This year's annual meeting will be held in a hybrid format allowing members and invited guests to attend in-person at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge Resort & Spa in Phoenix, Arizona or virtually via recordings on the ACNP Virtual Meeting Platform. The in-person option will include the classic ACNP Annual Meeting experience. The plenaries, panels, mini-panels, and study groups will not be live-streamed this year as they have been in past years but will be recorded with content posted within 48 hours after the session with the presenter’s approval.  Virtual attendees will not be able to participate in the in-person poster sessions; however, the e-poster gallery will be available for the duration of the meeting.  

The 2024 Technology in Psychiatry Summit (TIPS), organized by the McLean Institute for Technology in Psychiatry (ITP), is a venue to bring together leadership from academia, industry, and the public sector to discuss the latest innovations and implementations in mental health including wearables, passive sensing, deep phenotyping, AI, virtual reality, online-based therapies, and more. The summit will take place as a 1-day meeting on Saturday, December 7th in Phoenix, Arizona just prior to the ACNP Annual Meeting. TIPS closely aligns with the mission statement of the new ACNP Journal NPP-Digital Psychiatry and Neuroscience which focuses on advances in digital methods to diagnose, treat, prevent, understand, and model psychiatric illnesses.

As you are making your travel plans for the ACNP Annual Meeting, consider coming a day early to join TIPS! You can find more information on our website on registration, and the call for poster submissions is open until September 4. The agenda will be live soon. Trainee/student discounted registration rates and a limited hotel room block are available.

Join the TIPS mailing list to stay in the loop on summit updates and the upcoming announcement of the finalized agenda.

Dawn Ionescu, M.D., Education & Training Committee Chair

Josh Roffman, M.D., M.Sc., Education & Training Committee Co-Chair

The Education & Training Committee is pleased to announce the selection of 66 outstanding scientists for the 2024 ACNP Travel Award program. We received 329 applications for the 66 awards, making this yet another year for difficult decisions by the committee. 

For a complete listing of the awardees, please click here:

Travel Awardee Class of 2024

The ACNP URM Near-Peer Mentorship Program is the College's newest initiative to promote and sustain diversity in the ACNP pipeline; this program is designed to provide year-long one-on-one mentorship support from ACNP members to individuals from historically excluded groups who plan to enter or are early career scientists in research fields in and adjacent to neuropsychopharmacology. The program provides education on topics such as career skills, goal setting, negotiating, time management, starting a lab, negotiating positions, career life balance, and culturally responsive mentorship relationships. This is an intensive multi-year program that includes monthly virtual mentoring, monthly training workshops, and an annual in-person half-day mentorship program just prior to the ACNP Annual Meeting. The program is managed by the ACNP URM Mentoring Task Force and the College, utilizing materials from the Center for the Improvement for Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER). The goal of the program is to optimize mentoring relationships by providing mentors and mentees with an intellectual framework for effective mentoring relationships, an opportunity to experiment with various methods, and a forum in which to solve mentor/mentee dilemmas with the help of their peers.

Advances and Challenges in Using Neuroimaging to Identify Mechanisms and Treatments of Mental Health Conditions

The ACNP Panel Session for Neuropsychopharmacology Reviews will be held on Monday, December 9,

9:00AM-11:00AM Mountain Standard Time

While the causes of mental health conditions are multi-faceted, disruptions in brain function, structure, and development are central to understanding both the mechanisms by which such conditions emerge and how to treat them best. Such efforts in both human and animal research have drawn heavily on a variety of invasive and non-invasive brain imaging tools in both humans and animals. These efforts have been hugely informative in a number of ways, helping us to identify both shared and unique neural differences present in a number of different psychiatric disorders and helping to both generate and test theories about etiological pathways to the development of mental illness. At the same time, research in both human and animal neuroimaging has also met with challenges, including issues around the interpretation of obtained signals, robustness of results, and reliability across time and settings. As such, novel approaches and methods to both invasive and non-invasive neuroimaging in humans and animals have been developed to address these concerns and move the field forward. 

Nomination materials for new Associate Member, Member, and Fellow promotion candidates are available under the Membership tab on the ACNP Website. The deadline for nominations and applications is September 5, 2024. Should you have questions or need assistance, please contact ACNP at acnp@acnp.org.

REMINDER:

New Associate Member and Member nominees must have attended a minimum of one ACNP Annual Meeting prior to applying for membership.

Membership Mentors: Membership Mentors are recent past Membership Committee members who have agreed to counsel prospective membership nominees and/or their nominators on membership application to the College. The members included on this list have agreed to be contacted by applicants and their nominators.



Current Membership Mentors

2024 New Associate Members

The College would like to highlight the new 2024 Associate Member Class!

Stay tuned for the November Bulletin to meet our other new Associate Members.

AfCNP School on Neuropsychopharmacology of Stress and Substance Use Disorders

The African College of Neuropsychopharmacology (AfCNP), in collaboration with the Aga Khan University Brain and Mind Institute, organized a one-week school themed “Neuropsychopharmacology of Stress and Substance Use Disorders” from June 2nd to June 8th, 2024, at the Aga Khan University, Nairobi, Kenya. This initiative was aimed at offering advanced training for junior to mid-level African faculty and early career scientists poised to establish independent programs in mental health and brain science.

 Objectives:

• To provide early career scientists with up-to-date information on stress-related disorders and co-morbidity of stress with other psychiatric disorders, including substance use disorders (SUDs).
• Enhance collaboration between early career researchers and established scientists across the world.

This inaugural school, led by AFCNP president Prof. Lukoye Atwoli and supported by Prof. Peter Kalivas, the Director of the Center for Opioid and Cocaine Addiction (COCA) at the Medical University of South Carolina (also a past president of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology), attracted 20 early career researchers from across Africa and a diverse faculty from around the globe. 

NPP is seeking applications for the

next Editorial Intern!

The journal, Neuropsychopharmacology, is looking for their next Editorial Intern. The opportunity is available to early-career investigators (must have a Ph.D. and/or M.D. or one that is incoming within the calendar year) in neuroscience who are interested in scientific publishing. The Editorial Intern assists with NPP activities including social media and conceptualizes and implements special projects related to analysis of journal function. Please click here for more information on the Editorial Intern position.

The deadline to submit an application is August 30, 2024.

Supported by the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP), this ALBA-ACNP video series talks about allyship for diversity and inclusion and showing support to scientists from underrepresented groups, through the thematic video interviews of four researchers working in psychiatric neuroscience and neuropsychopharmacology in the US. Interviews include the following ACNP members:

Yasmin Hurd, Ph.D.

Edythe London, Ph.D.

M. Mercedes Perez-Rodriguez, M.D., Ph.D.

Marina Picciotto, Ph.D.

Selected Educational Resource Papers on the Responsible Care and Use of Animals in Research

The Animal Research Committee has placed together selected educational resource papers on the responsible care and use of animals in research for ACNP members! The articles are broken down into topic areas and if they are relevant for mice, rats or both.

This webpage is for ACNP members only and you must be logged in to the ACNP website to view. Click here to view on the ACNP website!

Please email ACNP, acnp@acnp.org, to provide feedback on additional resources or

feedback to the Animal Research Committee.

2024/2025 ACNP/AMP BRAD Fellow!

Nakul Aggarwal, Ph.D.

M.D. - Ph.D. Student

University of Wisconsin - Madison

The ACNP Animal Research Committee, in collaboration with Americans for Medical Progress (AMP), is pleased to announce the selection of Dr. Nakul Aggarwal as the 2024-2025 ACNP/AMP Biomedical Research Awareness Day (BRAD) Fellow. BRAD encompasses a set of ongoing activities intended to educate students and the broader public about the importance of biomedical research, including the humane study of animals in it. 

If you are interested in being spotlighted in future ACNP Bulletins,

please contact Dr. Galbo-Thomma (galbothomma@uthscsa.edu).

• September 5, 2024: Deadline to submit new Membership Nominations and Promotions
• October 7, 2024: Deadline to submit Promising Targets abstract
• October 17, 2024: Early Annual Meeting Registration Deadline
• December 8-11, 2024: ACNP 63rd Annual Meeting, Phoenix, Arizona 

Upcoming Meetings:

To see a list of upcoming meetings in the field of neuropsychopharmacology, please click below:

Employment and Grant Opportunities:

To see a list of new employment and grant opportunities in the field of neuropsychopharmacology, please click below:

For a full listing of the ACNP Staff in the Executive Office, click here.