Quarterly
Newsletter

AUGUST 2026

As summer continues, Women in Learning (WIL) is excited to share our August 2026 newsletter, featuring recent publications from our team, community highlights, and upcoming opportunities to connect!

In this issue, we recap our IBNS 2026 meetup and our panel on motherhood in neuroscience, welcome a new WIL member, and look ahead to our upcoming Flagship Luncheon at the Pavlovian Society Meeting in Montréal. We also invite our mentors and mentees to share feedback through our mentorship program survey and are excited to share our new limited-edition WIL Montréal merchandise. Finally, learn how you can get more involved with WIL through leadership and volunteer opportunities, including open Executive Director and Director of Committees positions and opportunities to contribute to our Newsletter, Mentoring, and other committees.

We hope you enjoy this issue and look forward to connecting with you at our upcoming WIL events!

Recent publications by team WIL:

• A new pre-print from Dr. Moriel Zelikowsky demonstrates that social isolation is sufficient to induce decreases in social motivation and increases in social fear and hesitancy in mice.

• A new commentary with Dr. Janine Kwapis describes a new study that investigates distinct neuronal ensembles that underlie the encoding and retrieval of complex spatial memories.

• A new pre-print from Dr. Janine Kwapis examines the mechanisms underlying age-related impairments in hippocampal memory updating.

• A new paper with Payton Robinson and Dr. Sydney Trask describes how fear conditioning with five footshocks is sufficient to produce stress-enhanced fear learning in rats but does not produce physiological characteristics of stress.

• A new paper with Dr. Nicole Ferrera and Dr. Sydney Trask investigates how social instability alters social behaviors across adolescence and adulthood.

• A new paper from Payton Robinson and Dr. Sydney Trask examines how weak shock presentations reduce fear behaviour in a stimulus-specific manner. 

• A new paper with Dr. Denisse Paredes investigates the neural mechanisms of stress-enhanced fear responding and identifies posterior paraventricular thalamus hyperactivity as a mechanism for stress-induced sensitization of unlearned fear.

  A new paper with Dr. Abha Rajbhandari examines mutation-dependent responses to sleep and exercise in clonal haematopoiesis.

  Are you a WIL member and would like to be featured in the next issue? Email your publication’s DOI and full name to womeninlearning@gmail.com with “Member Publication Highlight” in the subject. Preprints are welcome!

Panel Recap: Motherhood in Neuroscience

Thank you to all who attended our June panel on motherhood in neuroscience! We especially want to say thank you to our panellists: Payton Robinson, Dr. Avery Sicher, Dr. Heidi Meyer, and Dr. Janine Kwapis. The goal of the panel was to bring together scientists from different career stages to discuss the realities of balancing science and family life. The takeaway from the panel is that communication is key. Communication helps align expectations, reduce conflict, and create the flexibility needed to succeed in both roles. Open, honest communication with your employer can help bridge competing demands and set more realistic deadlines. We also discussed the importance of community. Identify people in both your professional and personal circles who can help! Whether that is getting extra hands on an experiment, setting up a carpool service, or finding a friend to vent to, community is a pillar of success that both scientific research and parenting share.

IBNS 2026: Community Highlights

WIL attended IBNS in Cape Town, South Africa, providing an informal opportunity to connect with and build community among members. Congratulations to Kendra Loedige, our bingo winner! Attendees shared that it was a fun and welcoming opportunity to meet and chat with other members. Keep an eye out for WIL at future conferences, whether through presentations or social events. We look forward to seeing you at the next conference!

Connect, Network, and Grow with WIL at Upcoming Conferences

Save the date: Pavlovian Society Meeting & WIL Flagship Luncheon 2026

The Pavlovian Society 2026 Annual Meeting will take place September 17-19, 2026, in Montréal, Canada.  The conference will be hosted at CHUM & Union Française. For more details on the meeting or to register before August 31st, click here.

For those attending, our 16th annual WIL flagship luncheon will be held on September 19th, 2026 at 12 PM, in Montréal, at Cartier Arms in the Hyatt Centric Old Montreal. This year’s featured speaker will be Yael Niv from Princeton University.  Register for our WIL luncheon here or consider donating to support this event!

Are you a graduate student planning to attend the WIL luncheon? Consider applying for the 2026 Outstanding Graduate Woman in Learning Award! To apply, submit a CV and Letter of Support to womeninlearning@gmail.com by Monday, August 31st. For more information on whether you qualify, click here.

Say hello! Let’s welcome our new WIL member:

Dr. Jennifer Donegan is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on the neural circuits that underlie psychiatric disorders, with a particular interest in the hippocampus. In a recent publication, her lab examined the structure and function of ventral hippocampal circuits that influence motivated, emotional, and cognitive behaviors. Check out this new paper titled “Discrete hippocampal projections are differentially regulated by parvalbumin and somatostatin interneurons” (paper link). Dr. Donegan’s current research examines how chronic stress reshapes these circuits and contributes to vulnerability and resilience across different behavioral outcomes. Everyone has a different journey into neuroscience research, and Dr. Donegan gave us insight into hers: “I first became interested in this field as an undergraduate majoring in advertising and psychology; after taking a physiological psychology course and learning about the neurobiological basis of human behavior, I made a hard turn into research and have been fascinated by neuroscience ever since.” Give her a warm welcome into the WIL community!

Mentorship Program Survey

 A reminder to all WIL mentors and mentees: if you haven’t already, please take a few minutes to complete our mentorship program survey! Your feedback helps us improve the program and better support our community.

Complete the mentorship survey 

Get Involved with Women in Learning! 

Interested in becoming more involved with Women in Learning? WIL is currently seeking new leadership and volunteers to help shape the future of our organization! We are accepting nominations (including self-nominations!) for Executive Director and Director of Committees, as well as expressions of interest from members who would like to serve on WIL committees, including our Newsletter and Mentoring Committees, or contribute in other ways.

Whether you're looking to gain leadership experience, build new skills, connect with the WIL community, or simply lend a hand, we'd love to hear from you. Complete our Leadership & Volunteer Interest Form to get involved! 

We have new Merch!

If you are interested in purchasing limited-edition 2026 “WIL Montreal” t-shirts, find the order form here.

(T-shirt cost: $30 & shipping, if applicable, is $8)