A critical issue facing neuroscience is the integration of many exciting fields of research that interact with each other, but presently are separate. While some problems require single disciplinary research, areas with major societal implications such as intellectual disability or ageing call for interdisciplinary approaches. Integrated efforts are needed to develop methods for prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease and to understand the basic mechanisms of the brain.

Professor Michael Raupach FAA FTSE is the Director of the Climate Change Institute, Australian National University, Canberra. This position follows a career of many years with CSIRO. His scientific foci include Earth System science, carbon-climate-human interactions, land-air interactions, and fluid mechanics. From 2000 to 2008 he was an inaugural co-chair of the Global Carbon Project, an international project studying the natural and human influences on the global carbon cycle.

Robert Warner received his Ph.D. degree in 1973 and joined the faculty at UC-Santa Barbara in 1975, twice serving as Chair of the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology.