BRIEF
SUMMARY OF CERI MEETING
On
September 28 - 30, at the Montreal Neurological Institute, the founding institution for present day epilepsy
research and practice in the world, the Canadian Epilepsy Research Initiative
(CERI), an initiative of the Canadian
League against Epilepsy (CLAE), held an organizing and research theme
development meeting. The purpose of the meeting was to establish strategies for
supporting epilepsy research in Canada.
Specific
goals of the meeting were the following:
1. To recognize the various disciplines that
make up our pool of expertise and our areas of strength;
2. To identify the themes that we, as Canadian
researchers, wish to pursue based on our interests and the funding
opportunities available;
3. To decide on our structure and our
relationship to the CLAE;
To
date we have 134 epilepsy researchers registered in CERI of which 80 attended
this meeting. The composition of members presently comprises about 50% basic
science researchers and 50% clinical researchers. The program details are
posted on our web site (<http://www.ceri-icre.mcgill.ca>). The initial
identification of themes and theme animators is appended below.
Here are the main conclusions of the meeting:
1)
By an unanimous vote of CERI members present at the last day of meeting it has
been decided to join CLAE, changing
our name from CERI to a name reflecting this new merged relationship:
CLAE-CERI. The goup will continue functioning as a section of CLAE. 2) Recruitment Drive: As a result of this
decision, it is now essential that all researchers interested in epilepsy join
the CLAE and CERI. We are particularly interested in expending the membership
on students, trainees, and young investigators. Please see the attached letter
(Letter to CLAE members) explaining how to join CLAE.
(Also
please note that in order to obtain services from CLAE this has to been done
individually rather than by a group transfer of data).
We
have to emphasize that by this fusion of CERI and CLAE, the research program
and emphasis of CLAE organization will be greatly strengthened and the
researchers will play a major role in its direction and future. This is
precisely in accord with the initial goals of CLAE as stated in its
constitution.
The
founding leader of CLAE, Dr. Juhn Wada, is delighted with the turn of events.
Finally, the CLAE is our link to the ILAE (the International League against
Epilepsy) and to the major fundraiser for epilepsy research in Canada, Epilepsy
Canada.
3)
On the theme of fundraising,
Epilepsy Canada, which hosted this meeting in Montreal, emphasized the close
mutually beneficial relationship that we have and must continue and strengthen.
Also the NeuroScience Canada Foundation was present and indicated interest in
possibly partnering with us (CLAE) and Epilepsy Canada to support research
infrastructure (such as training programs) in epilepsy.
4) Themes and Teams:
The
core of our research effort centers around the development of mutually
agreeable research themes lead by enthusiastic research teams. In
the final discussion at the Montreal meeting, we created the attached Table. It
has to be stressed that this is only the beginning of the process, since many
researchers were unable to attend and hence their interests were not
necessarily properly represented. Also the development of themes takes time,
interactions and additional funding opportunities.
The
presentations of Richard Brière, representing CIHR, and Patrice Roy,
representing industry (Pfizer Canada) were most helpful with regard to these
opportunities. We now need everyone's input into the further development of
present and future themes.
For
this purpose we already have on our web site a Discussion Forum that will be
further expanded into Chat rooms for individual themes/teams. Interest groups should
consider smaller organizational meetings for intellectual exchange and strategy
development. As indicated in R. Brière's presentation (see our web for Dr.
Brière's presentation) we should already consider proposing RFAs (request for
applications) to CIHR. 5) Future Meetings:
a) Developmental meetings: To further
develop the strategy for epilepsy research under the CLAE, we propose meeting
with those who are planning to attend the next conferences:
i)
AES (American Epilepsy Society, Nov. 30 to December 5 in Philadelphia) possibly
in the evening of Sunday, December 2.
ii)
Eastern EEG being held in the Laurentians on February 1 to 3.
b)
The major Constitutive meeting is
planned to be held at the Canadian Congress of Neurological Sciences (CCNS)
which will occur from June 18 to 22, 2002. Since there will be no epilepsy
subjects till the evening of Tuesday, June 18, we could have a meeting of
CLAE-CERI from the Sunday (June 16) or the Monday till Tuesday afternoon,
probably on the campus of UBC.
At
this meeting we will finalize our structure and bylaws and elect leadership. In
preparation for this meeting we will have decided (via Discussion forum - see
below - led by Mac Burnham) on how to properly and transparently run our ship.
We
should already be thinking of the scientific program for this meeting as well.
The most important time will be that spent on further development of research
themes and teams. Hence the program should be developed with that in mind.
c) Use of the CERI Discussion Forum
There
was a general agreement that the CERI Discussion Forum should be used for
further development of different aspects of CERI. Ante is ready to help set-up
any number of Discussion Forums as per request of Animators. For those that had
troubles login in: check Ante's presentation on the CERI web site for detailed
visual instructions.
It
is now critical that we all join the CLAE-CERI.
Once again – here is the website of each organization:
CERI-ICRE:
http://www.ceri-icre.mcgill.ca
CLAE:
http://www.clae.org/
Yours
truly,
Peter L. Carlen and Ante L. Padjen
For
the Organizing Committee.
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