Neuroscience Graduate Student Travel Award Program

The UVA Brain Institute is pleased to offer the UVA Brain Institute Neuroscience Graduate Student Travel Award Program to support attendance at the 2026 Society for Neuroscience (SfN) Meeting in Washington D.C. (November 14–18, 2026). We are now accepting applications from rising second-year graduate students who are conducting neuroscience research in any school across UVA. 

We encourage all interested and eligible students to apply.

Eligibility

Graduate students are eligible if they:

  • Will be a 2nd year graduate student in Fall 2026 and currently in a lab doing neuroscience research
  • Have not received any other funding to attend a meeting/conference/symposium for 2026
  • Will submit an abstract to and present their accepted poster at SfN 2026

Funding

Awardees will receive $1,000. Funds will be dispersed to each awardee’s primary department, and awardees should follow their department’s standard reimbursement processes. Cost sharing is expected.

Application Process

Applicants should submit:

  1. The abstract to be submitted to SfN – Include title, author list, and an abstract of no more than 2,300 characters, including punctuation but not spaces
    • Near-final drafts acceptable
  2. A paragraph (no more than 300 words) describing the impact of this travel award on their future career goals
  3. A Specific Aims or Objectives page on their anticipated thesis project – not to exceed 1 page (single-spaced, 11-point font, with 0.5-inch margins)
  4. Curriculum Vitae (CV)
  5. Unofficial UVA graduate transcript

Reviewers will assess each application based on merit, considering clarity of the specific aims page, impact on the applicant, and the applicant’s preparation for undertaking the project. Feedback will not be returned to applicants.

The application portal will open in April.

Deadline

The 2026 deadline will be Friday, May 22, 2026. 

Decisions will be communicated to all applicants no later than Monday, June 8, 2026, before the SfN abstract deadline.

Questions?

Please reach out to the Brain Institute at BrainUVA@uvahealth.org.