Congratulations to Dr. Marineli on receiving the NINDS Rigor Champion Award!  The NINDS lauched the Rigor Champions Award in 2023 in an effort to promote research rigor and transparent reporting and to foster a culture of reserach quailty withing the scientific ecosystem. The goal of this prize is to help recognize and reward those individuals and small teams who have championed rigor and transparency practices above and beyond their normal job duties and who have helped cultivate a culture that promotes robust, high-quality neuroscience research.

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Josue Lopez and colleagues from the Lee Lab published a reserach article in The Journal of Neuroscience entitled "Caldendrin Is a Repressor of PIEZO2 Channels and Touch Sensation in Mice". This study investigated the role of the calmodulin-like Ca²⁺ sensor, caldendrin, in the regulation of mechanically activated ion channels and their roles in touch sensation. 

Congratulations to Dr. Jon Pierce on being award a CNS Spark Grant to support his research proposal entitled "Predicting Genes that Cause Phenotypes as Extra Copies".

The CNS Spark Grants program supports new ideas that have the potential to elevate or transform a research program but that are too early-stage in development to be appropriate for external funding opportunities. The program encourages high-risk/high-reward projects. Applicants may propose to develop new methods or to gather preliminary data for new directions in research. Proposals for exploratory,