Annual Retreat – UCLA Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics

NBG Annual Retreat

The Neurobehavioral Genetics (NBG) Annual Retreat is an all-day event that the Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics typically hosts annually off-site in order to promote cohesiveness in the Training Program for Neurobehavioral Genetics and foster interactions between participating trainees and faculty. The retreat attracts over 70 faculty and trainees combined.

The first retreat was hosted on January 23, 2007 and continues to be a key component of the training program.

While the retreat centers on research presentations by trainees, it also includes an organized discussion of issues relating to the ethical conduct of science. In recent years, distinguished guest speakers have been invited to provide a research talk and interact extensively with the trainees throughout the day.

Past retreats were hosted at the Annenberg Community Beach House in Santa Monica. Trainees showcased a very impressive set of talks on their current work, ranging from miniscope technology for genetically engineered mice to data mining of electronic health records.

Group photo of 45 attendees (faculty, postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, and staff) at the Neurobehavioral Genetics Retreat hosted on April 18, 2019 at the Annenberg Community Beach House

Past Retreats

Year	Keynote Speaker	Topic	Agenda
2025	Russell A. Poldrack, PhD Chair and Professor Department of Psychology at Stanford University	“Making Cognitive Neuroscience More Reproducible”	PDF
2024	Neil Risch, PhD Lamond Family Foundation Distinguished Professor in Human Genetics Professor of Epidemiology & Biostatistics Founding Director, Institute for Human Genetics UC San Francisco	“Missing Heritability and Genetic Ancestry for Mendelian and Complex Traits"	PDF
2023	Alicia Martin, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Medicine Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit Harvard Medical School	“The Critical Importance of Diversity in Genomics for Elucidating the Heritable Basis of Psychiatric Disorders”	PDF
2022	Anna Molofsky, M.D., Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry UC San Francisco	“Innate immune mechanisms regulating brain development and plasticity”	PDF
2019	Daniel Benjamin, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of (Research) Economics Center for Economic and Social Research Department of Economics University of Southern California	“Polygenic Scores and the Future of Social-Science Genetics”	PDF
2018	Jonathan Pritchard, Ph.D. Professor, Departments of Biology and Genetics Stanford University	“The genetic architecture of human complex traits: from polygenic to omnigenic”	PDF
2017	Gene Robinson, Ph.D. Director, Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology Swanlund Chair, Center for Advanced Study Professor, Departments of Entomology and Neuroscience University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign	“Me to We: Using Honey Bees to Find the Genetic Roots of Social Life””	PDF
2016	Benjamin Neale, Ph.D. Assistant in Genetics, Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit Massachusetts General Hospital Assistant Professor of Medicine Harvard Medical School Associate Member, Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research and Program in Medical and Population Genetics Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT	"Developments in the methods of analysis of genetic data”	PDF
2015	Jonathan Flint, M.D. Michael Davys Professor of Neuroscience Head of the Psychiatric Genetics Group at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics University of Oxford	"The genetic basis of major depression”	PDF
2014	Jay Shendure, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Department of Genome Sciences University of Washington	“Next generation human genetics”	PDF
2012	Kenneth S. Kosik, M.D. Harriman Professor of Neuroscience Research, MCDB Co-Director, Neuroscience Research Institute UC Santa Barbara	“A Gene Crucible in Antioquia Colombia”	PDF
2009	N/A	N/A	PDF
2008	N/A	N/A	PDF
2007	N/A	N/A	PDF

Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics

NBG Annual Retreat

Past Retreats

UCLA Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics

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