Collaborative Research Centre 1158: Research Days

The Collaborative Research Centre 1158 “From nociception to chronic pain: Structure-function properties of neural pathways and their organization” offers a quarterly seminar series to enable regular contact and scientific exchange between the Centre’s young researchers and faculties/PIs. These Research Days are organized by Rohini Kuner, ncRNAPain consortium member and Speaker of the Collaborative Research Centre 1158. During the first half of 2016, two research days took place, on 22nd March and 16th June respectively. Apart from presenting and thoroughly discussing project-specific data, the young scientists additionally organized a young scientist’s symposium focusing on cutting-edge methodologies required for the project at the June event, wherein the individual sessions were also moderated by the junior scientists.

The Collaborative Research Centre 1158 was established by the German Research Foundation at Heidelberg University in July 2015 and comprises nineteen multidisciplinary projects and several associated research endeavours that span diverse, top-class clinical and basic research institutes in the twin cities of Heidelberg and Mannheim. Research in this consortium promises to deliver a structural and functional understanding of circuits and networks underlying sensory and affective components of pain and their modulation by circumstances which induce structural reorganization and functional plasticity, including disease states, negative emotions and stress. A mechanistic analysis of chronic neuropathic pain of peripheral and central origin in rodent models and in human patients will be a strong focus.