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Letter from the CNS President – Summer 2017

By Kenneth J. Mack, MD, PhD | CNS President

Kenneth J. Mack, MD, PhD | CNS President
Kenneth J. Mack, MD, PhD
CNS President

Dear Colleagues:

Part of my job as President is to support and recognize the pillars of excellence in our field in the realms of practice, education and research. Child Neurology Society members are actively and enthusiastically engaged in research and committed to expanding our knowledge base. Our members should be proud of their many accomplishments. 

We see this commitment to excellence in research and education reflected in the 40 outstanding symposia proposals that Marc Patterson and the Scientific Selection Committee reviewed for our annual meeting. 

It is demonstrated in the 250-300 quality abstracts submitted each year from which the Scientific Selection Committee chooses 175-200 for presentation at annual meeting platform and poster sessions. It is demonstrated by the strong research contributions that this year’s Hower (Nina Schor) and Sachs (Nico Moshé) awardees have made, as well as thought leaders like Huda Zoghbi and Eric Payne who are featured elsewhere in this issue of Connections.

The CNS Research Committee, under the recent leadership of Barry Kosofsky and Brad Schlagger, has been one of our society’s most active and involved committees. The Awards Committee, under Nigel Bamford’s direction, annually reviews applications for the recently endowed CNS Philip R. Dodge Young Investigator Award and has seamlessly integrated review as well of applications for the Child Neurology Foundation Don Shields Research Grant, supporting clinical or translational research, and the Pediatric Epilepsy Research Foundation (PERF) Grant (thank you, Roy Elterman!) supporting clinical and basic research. It is worth noting that Nigel and his committee members do more than merely select “winners and losers”; they provide meaningful mentorship by incorporating in all of their acceptance and non acceptance correspondence detailed critiques constructively pointing out areas where improvement in conception, application, or description might be in order.

The Child Neurology Career Development K-12 Award Program (CNCDP) has been led by Mike Johnston and a committed, active executive group. This group volunteers its time to meet prior to the annual CNS meeting and reviews applications from dozens of highly qualified young investigators. The program itself is NIH funded and provides support for the career development of 30 new academic researchers over a five-year period at different institutions around the country.

Part of the duty of researchers is to communicate and disseminate the findings. Child neurologists acccomplish this, in part, through CNS partnership with the ANA in publishing an exceptional journal, Annals of Neurology, and we thank Scott Pomeroy for playing a key role as a longtime member of the Editorial Board. We have an exceptional annual meeting, and this year in Kansas City will continue that tradition. And we are pleased now to extend access to the important work presented at the annual meeting on our newly launched Lifelong Learning CME website. All child neurologists will benefit from educational and maintenance of certification resources this new website affords; CNS members in particular will benefit from the free or steeply discounted access they have to its growing library of lectures, courses, and self assessment exams.

So, thanks to all of you for doing your part to advance research, advance our knowledge base, and participate in education for our field of child neurology. We have much to be excited about and proud of as we move toward regathering in Kansas City this October as well as in Chicago, Charlotte, San Diego, and Boston in the years to come.