Quarterly
Newsletter

JUNE 2026

As summer gets underway, Women in Learning (WIL) is excited to share our June 2026 newsletter, full of opportunities to connect, celebrate, and grow within our community. With conference season in full swing, it’s a great time to reconnect with colleagues, meet new faces, and highlight the impactful work happening across the field of learning and neuroscience.

In this issue, we’re thrilled to welcome new members, spotlight outstanding researchers and their recent work, and share highlights from this year’s WIL Luncheon at the Canadian Association for Neuroscience (CAN) meeting. The luncheon brought together members across career stages for an afternoon of engaging conversations, meaningful connections, and a strong sense of community.

We’re excited to carry this momentum into the months ahead, with upcoming networking events at IBNS 2026 and the Pavlovian Society Meeting. These gatherings will offer more opportunities to connect, collaborate, and continue building our supportive network.

Take a moment to explore this month’s highlights, we look forward to seeing many of you this summer!

Recent publications by team WIL:

• A new paper with Dr. Denisse Paredes uses a stress-enhanced fear learning model to show that prior stress enhances subsequent fear engram reactivation in the caudal, but not rostral, dentate gyrus, a region specialized for integrating emotional and motivational valence into memory.

• Sanutha Shetty and Dr. Abha Rajbhandari have a new preprint that characterizes PAC1R signaling within the preBötzinger complex as a key integrative mechanism linking respiratory rhythm with stress adaptation and metabolic regulation.

  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!

WIL at CAN 2026: Community Highlights

Our inaugural WIL CAN lunch brought together trainees, faculty members from across Canada, and industry representatives for an afternoon of guided discussions, sharing perspectives, and open networking. Participants discussed diverse insights, explored diverse career paths, and built meaningful connections across academia and industry. Thank you to everyone who attended and contributed to the engaging conversation! We look forward to continuing these connections at future WIL events.

Connect, Network, and Grow with WIL at Upcoming Conferences

Save the date: WIL at IBNS 2026!

WIL will be hosting a networking event at IBNS 2026 in South Africa on Friday, June 26, 2026, from 5:30-6:30 PM during the meeting. 

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. Our 16th WIL flagship luncheon will be held on September 19th, 2026 at 12PM, in Montréal, at Cartier Arms in the Hyatt Centric Old Montreal. This year’s featured speaker will be Yael Niv, from Princeton University. The conference will be hosted at CHUM & Union Française, with reduced room rates available at the Hyatt Centric Old Montréal. For more details on the meeting, click here. Register for our WIL luncheon here!

WIL Member Spotlight at CAN!

WIL would like to spotlight a member, Annie Ciernia, who attended CAN and our WIL CAN lunch! Dr. Ciernia is an early career researcher and Tier 2 Canada Research Chair at the University of British Columbia studying gene regulation in microglia, the brain’s immune cells. Her lab integrates genomics, bioinformatics, and mouse models to investigate how regulatory mechanisms such as histone acetylation, chromatin remodeling, and gut–brain interactions control microglial development, inflammation, and brain function. Together, her lab aims to uncover the fundamental regulatory mechanisms governing gene expression in the brain and how their disruption contributes to brain disorders. Learn more about her research at the Ciernia Lab website!

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

Let’s all welcome a new WIL member, Dr. Erica Townsend! Dr. Townsend is a postdoctoral Fellow in Dr. Jacqueline Giovanniello's lab at the Temple University Lewis Katz School of Medicine, where she studies the impacts of chronic stress on habit formation and striatal activity using miniscopes. Last year, she completed her PhD at Dartmouth College under the supervision of Dr. Kyle Smith, where she focused on dissociating dopamine transmission underlying Pavlovian learning and motivation. Her most recent preprint on this work titled “Phasic dopamine encodes persistent attraction to reward cues”, explores these mechanisms in greater depth. Be sure to check out this interesting paper and support a fellow WIL member!

Join us for our upcoming panel this Wednesday, June 10th:

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)