NTP Resources

Welcome to the Graduate Association for Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Students (GAINS), created by and for NTP students! All NTP students are members of GAINS.

The GAINS website has resources on how to get involved as well as resources for success in both professional and personal aspects of graduate school!

There are many journal clubs affiliated with the Neuroscience Training Program and are listed below:

Neuronal Cytoskeleton in Development and Plasticity

• Meets on alternate Mondays at 2:45pm in RM 5571 WIMR II. The focus is on cellular and molecular mechanisms of neuronal morphogenesis, axon guidance, synaptogenesis and plasticity. This club is directed by Erik Dent, Tim Gomez, and Mary Halloran. For further information, please contact Tim Gomez (tmgomez@wisc.edu).

Cerebral Ischemic Damage

• Meets bi-weekly on Tuesdays at 12:00 in D4/473 CSC. Areas covered include mechanisms underlying necrotic and apoptotic cell death during ischemic and traumatic brain damage and effective intervention to protect these damages. Participants are faculty, postdocs, research staff and students. At each meeting, one person will lead the discussion.

Hearing and Donuts

• Meets Friday mornings at 8:30am in 281 Medical Sciences Building. Areas covered include biophysics of hair cell transduction, cochlear mechanics, cochlear modeling, physiological responses of hair cells, auditory nerve fibers, auditory cells at all levels of the central auditory system, and auditory psychophysics of humans and animals. Participants are faculty, post-docs and graduate students who are interested in any facet of audition. Faculty participants include Banks, Fettiplace, Jones, Litovsky, Oertel, Populin, Postle, Smith, and Yin. Participants take turns in presenting research results or reviews of journal articles in an informal setting. This club has met continuously since 1985. For further information, please contact Ruth Litovsky (litovsky@waisman.wisc.edu).

Ion Channel Journal Club

• Meets every other Tuesday at 4:00pm. For further information, please contact Matt Jones (mathewjones@wisc.edu), Baron Chanda (chanda@wisc.edu), or Cynthia Czajkowski (cmczajko@wisc.edu).

Neural Stem Cells and Adult Neurogenesis Journal Club

• Meets each week on Thursday at 5:00pm in 177 Medical Sciences Building. Two broad topic areas are covered: stem cells and the nervous system, and neurogenesis in the adult brain. Weekly presentations rotate alphabetically among the members of the journal club. For further information, please contact Ron Kalil (262-4903 or rekalil@wisc.edu) or Mike Hendrickson (mhendrickson@gmail.com).

Here are resources suggested by NTP students for NTP students!

• The BioTech Center is a helpful resource for sequencing
• DiscoverPD  helps UW graduate students to match their skill development needs with upcoming campus events, self-guided activities, online training, and more
• Data Science Hub has workshops and consultations on managing large datasets
• –ICTR offers statistical consultations and clinical trials workshops
• UW also provides a master list of Research Cores on campus
• The Society for Neuroscience offers student membership at a nominal fee, which includes a bi-monthly newsletter, reductions in the cost of publications and subscriptions, and more
• SMPH maintains a list of Core Facilities they support
• SSC also offers statistical and coding help, including workshops and short courses on R, Python, etc. (see “Training” tab on their website)

As part of your training at the NTP, one semester of teaching is required, and final approval of how you fulfill teaching requirement is given by your Advisory Committee.

Typically, the teaching requirement involves being a laboratory instructor or section leader and should not require more than 10 hours per week. Financial compensation for this teaching is not always available, although sometimes it can be arranged.

You may fulfill the teaching requirement in other ways as well, resources for which are listed below:

PEOPLE Program

• NTP hosts a neuroscience unit for the PEOPLE Summer Program. To complete the NTP teaching requirement, you must either teach two summers of the one-week program or one summer of the three-week program. The NTP sends a call out for PEOPLE instructors in January or February with the courses being taught in July. If you are interested in teaching the PEOPLE Program neuroscience unit please contact the NTP office.

Teaching Fellows in Neuroscience (TFN)

• The aim of the TFN program is to allow interested NTP graduate students to obtain training in teaching while they maintain our traditional research-oriented training leading to a Ph.D. in neuroscience. TFN is designed for students who are interested in getting faculty positions where teaching is a requirement of the job, such as at four-year liberal arts colleges or at primarily research universities. TFN is a collaborative effort between the NTP, the Delta Program and WISCIENCE. To view TFN requirements, please click here.

Delta Program

• The Delta Program promotes the development of a future national faculty in the natural and social sciences, engineering, and mathematics that is committed to implementing and advancing effective teaching practices for diverse student audiences as part of their professional careers.

Starting October 5, 2015, the UW System has enacted many changes to its travel policy. Some of the highlights are listed below. NTP faculty and students must adhere to both the UW System and campus-wide policies, as well as School of Medicine and Public Health policies. Students should consult the NTP office prior to booking travel to ensure they are following the most up-to-date policies.

As required by IRS and federal grant regulations, all travel paid or reimbursed from university-administered funds must be in compliance with university travel policies, regardless of the funding source (i.e., federal grants and contracts, auxiliary operations, general operating funds, and restricted funds).

*Note: The UW System has created a calculator tool to determine lodging and meal allowances based on your destination and days of travel. You should use this to determine how much you are allowed while traveling. This calculator is not used to determine meal allowance for things like recruiting dinners that you might pay for.

Below is a list of the most pressing changes to the travel policy that you should be aware of:

1. All expense reports be must be completed, documented and submitted within 90 days of trip end date to avoid non-reimbursement of the expenses.

2. As with before, itemized receipts are required for NTP to reimburse you for any expenses and alcohol is non-reimbursable.

3. All airfare must be booked using Concur.

4. Lodging

• Use of internet-based lodging “brokers” or third party sites is prohibited. Use of Concur is encouraged.
• When sharing a room with another University business traveler, a double occupancy room may be incurred, but may not exceed the total cost of a single occupancy room rate for the location for each traveler.

5. Meals

• Meals are only reimbursable for the traveler, not accompanying parties.
• Meal allowances are based on your destination, so use the calculator tool to plan.

• Travel not including overnight lodging will be limited to a tax reportable day trip meal allowance of $15/day when the approving authority expects the traveler to incur meal expenses.