Invitation to Attend

What would you do if someone offered you $10 million to undertake basic neuroscience research to treat and prevent addictions? How would you use that money most effectively to deliver outcomes that could be measurable and sustainable? How could it be used to complement and exploit advances in other areas of neuroscience? How could you be sure that it fitted into a larger picture of work being undertaken to address the same issue? What if this increase in funding was actually ten times that amount?

The goal of the ANNA Workshop is provide an answer to these questions in order to develop a strategic framework for future addiction neurosciences research activities within Australia that links with international research community.

Like many of you I believe that the best research is created in an environment of like minds, sharing ideas and the results of the latest research from the global research community. This workshop, however, is designed to be different from the usual scientific conference where we all share our recent research achievements. We will still share ideas, however, the focus will be on sharing what we do not know, but need to know, if real progress is to be made in our understanding. This will impact our ability to intervene effectively in one of society's greatest contemporary threats to a productive and fulfilling existence.

The workshop has as its main objective - mobilising the knowledge of our most creative thinkers to focus our limited resource of funds and talented scientific minds, to achieve much needed breakthroughs in the understanding and ability to treat and prevent addictions.

Leading addiction researchers from around the world have been invited to attend this novel and exciting quest. They will assist in directing the discussion and posing what they believe are the important questions that need to be addressed by you, the scientific community that operates in this field.

With that collective strength and clarity, ANNA believes it will arrive at agreed priorities that will enable us to effectively focus existing resources and to secure further resources to implement what will be a consensus plan of neurobiological research on the causes of addiction.

ANNA believes strongly that increased research support is best achieved by the scientific community getting together to present government with a plan that is reasoned, defensible and compelling in its goals.

The inaugural ANNA Workshop will stimulate your mind and provide you, the neuron-scientific community with a set of strategic goals that will allow us to overcome such a major cause of human misery and suffering throughout the world.

Dr Michael Cohen - ANNA Chair

Professor MacDonald Christie - Scientific Advisory Board Chair