March 2019 - Comp-neuro - lists.cnsorg.org

NEST Conference 2019 --- Abstract submission and registration open

by Hans Ekkehard Plesser

Dear colleagues! It is a great pleasure to invite everyone interested in large-scale neural network simulation, particularly current and potential users of NEST, the Neural Simulation Tool (http://www.nest-simulator.org) to the NEST Conference 2019 to be held on 24/25 June 2019 (Monday/Tuesday, lunch to afternoon) on the beautiful campus of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences at Ås, 30km south of Oslo. The NEST Conference provides an opportunity for the NEST Community to meet, exchange success stories, swap advice, learn about current developments in and around NEST spiking network simulation and its application. We would like you to share your experiences made and results obtained with NEST during the conference. You can do so either by a short oral presentation (10–15 minutes), on a poster, through a demo, or by organizing group work. Important dates • 15 April 2019 — Deadline for abstract submissions • 01 May 2019 — Notification of acceptance • 15 May 2019 — Deadline for registration For details, abstract submission and registration, please see http://www.nest-initiative.org/conference You are also welcome to contact us at conference(a)nest-initiative.org. We are looking forward to welcoming you to Ås in June! Hans Ekkehard Plesser President The Neural Technology Simulation Initiative http://www.nest-initiative.org -- Prof. Dr. Hans Ekkehard Plesser Head, Data Science Section Faculty of Science and Technology Norwegian University of Life Sciences PO Box 5003, 1432 Aas, Norway Phone +47 6723 1560 Email hans.ekkehard.plesser(a)nmbu.no Home http://arken.nmbu.no/~plesser

March 8, 2019

Bernstein Conference 2019 in Berlin: Deadline for Workshop Proposals, March 27!

by Alexandra Stein

The Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience<https://www.bernstein-network.de/en/start_page> invites proposals for Satellite Workshops directly preceding the Bernstein Conference 2019<http://www.bernstein-conference.de/> in Berlin. ************************************************************** Important Dates: Satellite Workshops: September 17 - 18, 2019 Main Bernstein Conference: September 18 - 20, 2019 Deadline for Satellite Workshop proposal submission: March 27, 2019, 3 pm CET (Deadline will not be extended!) Notification of Workshop acceptance: April 2019 Special in 2019: The Conference on Cognitive Computational Neuroscience (CCN)<https://ccneuro.org/> will be held back-to back with the Bernstein Conference on September 13 - 16. ************************************************************** The Bernstein Conference is the largest annual single-track Computational Neuroscience conference in Europe. It hosts pre-conference workshops which provide a stage to discuss topical research questions, novel scientific approaches and challenges in Computational Neuroscience and related fields. Workshops addressing controversial issues, open problems, and comparisons of competing approaches are encouraged. The format should be designed to foster debate, rather than a mere series of talks. The selection criteria for workshop proposals will include scientific excellence, topical relevance and gender diversity. Satellite Workshop Schedule: September 17, 2019, 2:00 pm - 6:30 pm September 18, 2019, 8:30 am – 12:30 pm Workshop proposals are welcome for either half-day or full-day workshops. Workshop Costs – Financial Support: All organizers and speakers of accepted workshops will receive a waiver for the workshop fee. Organizers of accepted workshops additionally receive a waiver for the main conference. Coffee break catering will be provided. Up to 10 selected workshops can receive financial support up to 1.500,00 € each. Instructions for Workshop Proposal Preparation: Workshop proposals must contain: 1) Workshop Title 2) Concise description of workshop topic 3) List of potential speakers indicating speaker commitment 4) Optional: a comment on how the organizers plan to achieve gender diversity among speakers Please use the Workshop Proposal Form that can be downloaded here: www.bernstein-network.de/en/bernstein-conference/2019/satellite-workshops<http://www.bernstein-network.de/en/bernstein-conference/2019/satellite-work…> Deadline for submission of Workshop Proposals: March 27, 2019, 3 pm CET (Deadline will not be extended!) For further information about the conference, please visit the conference website www.bernstein-conference.de<http://www.bernstein-conference.de> Contact: bernstein.conference(at)fz-juelich.de We are looking forward to seeing you in Berlin! Workshop Selection Committee: Tatjana Tchumatchenko (Workshop Chair) Tim Vogels (Workshop Vice Chair) Danielle Bassett Alexander Borst Alain Destexhe Tim Gollisch Máté Lengyel Stephanie Palmer Elad Schneidman (Program Vice Chair) Susanne Schreiber (Program Chair) Terry Sejnowski Sara Solla Henning Sprekeler (Conference Chair and Host) Gina Turrigiano -- Dr. Alexandra Stein Head of Bernstein Coordination Site Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience | Bernstein Coordination Site (BCOS) Branch Office of the Forschungszentrum Jülich at the University of Freiburg Hansastr. 9A | 79104 Freiburg, Germany phone: (+49) 0761 203 9583 mobile: (+49) 0151 67114645 mail: a.stein(a)fz-juelich.de<mailto:a.stein@fz-juelich.de> web: www.bernstein-network.de<http://www.bernstein-network.de> Twitter: NNCN_Germany YouTube: Bernstein TV Facebook: Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience, Germany LinkedIn: Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience, Germany ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH 52425 Juelich Sitz der Gesellschaft: Juelich Eingetragen im Handelsregister des Amtsgerichts Dueren Nr. HR B 3498 Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: MinDir Dr. Karl Eugen Huthmacher Geschaeftsfuehrung: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Marquardt (Vorsitzender), Karsten Beneke (stellv. Vorsitzender), Prof. Dr.-Ing. Harald Bolt, Prof. Dr. Sebastian M. Schmidt ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

March 7, 2019

SUMMER SCHOOL ON COGNITIVE FOUNDATIONS OF ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR

by Rava A. da Silveira

*SUMMER SCHOOL ON* *COGNITIVE FOUNDATIONS OF ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR* *FRI June 28 to SUN July 7, 2019* *Sponsored by the NOMIS Foundation and the* *Alfred P. Sloan Foundation* >From the evening of Friday June 28 to noon of Sunday July 7, 2019, the second Summer School on Cognitive Foundations of Economic Behavior will take place in Vitznau, Lake Lucerne, Switzerland ( http://www.floraalpina.ch/en/hotel.html) The last 2.5 days of the Summer School consist of a workshop in which leading international researchers will present their recent findings in this area of research. The purpose of the first six days of the Summer School is to introduce graduate students and beginning researchers in economics and related disciplines to findings and methods from economics, psychology and neuroscience that allow features of human attention and perception to be taken into account when modeling economic behavior. The Summer School is part of an initiative sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the NOMIS Foundation, pursuing the idea that many well-documented but seemingly disparate behavioral phenomena – such as framing effects, anchoring or base-rate neglect, as well as hyperbolic discounting, probability weighting or overconfidence – may have a unified explanation in terms of imperfect attention and perceptual error. The co-organizers and principal faculty of the Summer Institute are Andrew Caplin (NYU), Ernst Fehr (University of Zurich), and Michael Woodford (Columbia University), who will be in attendance for the full program. Teaching faculty will also include Peter Dayan (Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tubingen), Sam Gershman (Harvard), George Loewenstein (Carnegie Mellon), Weiji Ma (NYU), Antonio Rangel (CalTech), Rava Azeredo da Silveira (ENS, Paris), Andrei Shleifer (Harvard), Dmitry Taubinsky (UC Berkeley), and Angela Yu (UC San Diego). The program will include lectures and tutorials about economic models of biases resulting from inattention, imperfect memory and other forms of cognitive imprecision, as well as the psychological and neuroscientific foundations and empirical measurement of imperfect attention and memory. The sessions will outline evidence, principles, empirical methods and formal models that enable the examination of the consequences of imperfect attention and perception for important individual behaviors and market outcomes. The program will also provide opportunities for students to discuss their ideas and research with the organizers, visiting faculty, and other participants. Participation is restricted to Ph.D. students who by July 2019 will have completed at least one year of their doctoral program, postdoctoral researchers, and to faculty who have only started their faculty position in the fall of 2018 or later. Candidates in related disciplines (e.g., psychology, neuroscience, computational science) who have a strong interest and advanced training in formal economics are also eligible. Most participant costs during the workshop, including housing and most meals, will be covered, and a capped travel stipend (covering most but not all of anticipated travel costs) will also be provided. About twenty- five participants will be admitted. Participants will be required to complete some assigned readings in advance, and to fully attend all sessions of the program. There is no application form or program information beyond this announcement. (For interested students, schedules of previous conferences organized by the Sloan-Nomis program will give an indication of the kind of topics to be discussed, and can be found at https://wp.nyu.edu/sloan_nomis_project/home/events/.) To apply, send (i) a curriculum vitae, (ii) a statement (maximum three pages) describing any current research, and the general nature of your interest in the cognitive foundations of economics, (iii) an (unofficial) course/grade transcript, and (iv) two letters of recommendation from faculty advisors. All applications must include an e-mail and an alternative means of contact (e.g., phone number). Send your curriculum vita, statement, and course/grade transcript (all collapsed into a *single *pdf file) to Sloan-Nomis-Summerschool(a)econ.uzh.ch. Ask your recommenders to send their letters to the same email address, with the following subject line: *Sloan-Nomis recommendation letter for APPLICANT NAME. *We anticipate a large pool of highly qualified applicants and to make final decisions quickly, so applications and letters must be received by the deadline. *Complete applications, including letters of recommendation, must be received by Sunday, March 17. *We will notify applicants solely through e-mail, by Monday, April 1, and will ask participants to confirm their participation soon thereafter. Inquiries can be sent to Sloan-Nomis-Summerschool(a)econ.uzh.ch.

March 7, 2019

Neuromodulation of Neural Microcircuits NM² conference, 24-26 May 2019

by Srikanth Ramaswamy

Dear All, We are delighted to announce the second Neuromodulation of Neural Microcircuits NM² conference on May 24 – 26, in Champéry, Switzerland. Click here for the Conference website<https://nm2.epfl.ch/> The overarching goal of the second NM² Conference is to provide a unifying and mechanistic view by which an ever-increasing number of neuromodulators, including monoamines, and peptides – the master switches – control genes, proteins, neurons and glia, dendrites, synapses, and emergent states in neural microcircuits across different brain regions in health and disease. Building such a mechanistic view of neuromodulation encounters several fundamental challenges to consider: 1. How do sensory signals, internal brain states, and computations in microcircuits, trigger the release of specific neuromodulators? 2. How do neuronal assemblies and larger brain circuits respond to neuromodulators? 3. How do neuromodulators shape synaptic plasticity and brain states? To this end, the NM² Conference will bring together researchers to bridge a variety of disciplines using state-of-the-art techniques in different brain regions, towards the common goal of understanding the mechanisms and principles of neuromodulation and addressing the challenges above. Our fundamental objective is to organize a dynamic conference that will highlight an up-to-date view of the neuromodulation of brain states, establish future directions, and attract new talent to drive forward this important field. REGISTRATION To register for the Conference, please click here<https://nm2.epfl.ch/registration/> Please register as soon as possible; only a limited number of seats are available. POSTER ABSTRACTS When submitting an abstract PhD students and Postdocs are encouraged to apply for Blue Brain travel awards to participate in the NM2 Conference. Awards, which are only open to those who submit abstracts, include registration for the Conference (including accommodation and full board), and travel support. Some of the submitted abstracts will be selected for flash talks. Please feel free to contact Dace Stiebrina<mailto:mailto:dace.stiebrina@epfl.ch> should you have any questions concerning the conference. Looking forward to seeing many of you there! Best, Srikanth ------------ Dr. Srikanth Ramaswamy Senior Scientist - Neuromodulation of Cells and Circuits EPFL - Blue Brain Project Campus Biotech Chemin des Mines 9 CH 1202, Geneva, Tel: +41 21 693 9633 Fax: +41 21 693 5350 www: people.epfl.ch/srikanth.ramaswamy<http://people.epfl.ch/srikanth.ramaswamy>

March 6, 2019

Computational Neuroscience Faculty position at Bristol University

by Conor Houghton

In the Department of Computer Science at the University of Bristol we are seeking to appoint a faculty member in Computational Neuroscience and Machine Learning at Lecturer or Senior Lecturer level, comparable to Assistant or Associate Professorship level. http://bit.ly/Bristol_neuro_job Candidates are sought with expertise in computational neuroscience or computational cognitive science and preference will be given to candidates whose research interests emphasise the parts of our discipline that are informed by, or relate, to machine learning. The University of Bristol is a significant centre for both computational neuroscience and machine learning and a leader in experimental, clinical and cognitive neuroscience. There is a robust tradition of collaboration between experimental and computational neuroscientists. Bristol itself is a friendly green coastal city with a rich and lively cultural scene and has consistently been voted one of the best places to live in the UK. You are welcome to contact one of us (conor.houghton||cian.odonnell||rui.costa)(a)bristol.ac.uk, or our head of department Seth Bullock, seth.bullock(a)bristol.ac.uk, to discuss the post informally. The closing date for applications is 31 March, with interviews in late May. We value diversity and are committed to equality of opportunity. All the best Conor Houghton Cian O'Donnell Rui Ponte Costa http://www.bristol.ac.uk/engineering/research/computational-neuroscience/

March 6, 2019

The Neuron School - Basic Computational Neuroscience in Alghero - ITALY

by Sergio Solinas

**Apologies for cross-posting** [All details about this school can be found online at The NEURON School Initiative <http://neuronschool.org/>] The Department of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Sassari is excited to announce *the second edition* of *The NEURON School* on Computational Neuroscience. This *one-week* school will introduce to the use of the simulation environment NEURON and related software to build brain models starting from experimental data up to their applications. - The school will provide basic notions on experimental methods to extract and process morphological and electrophysiological data targeting their use to build computational models of single neurons and neuronal networks. - We will explore the best practices to build sound computational models of ion channels and synaptic receptors. - The school will cover how these models can be constructed based on the principles of biological tissue growth in simulations. We welcome applications from all interested full graduate, Ph.D. students, and PostDocs in a variety of fields from biology, neurobiology, and psychology, to physics, engineering, and mathematics, and industry professionals with relevant background. Applicants are expected to have a good background in their discipline, interest in neuroscience, and some knowledge (even basic) of computer programming. *Format*: Morning tutorials will be complemented with Afternoon coding sessions and Evening discussions promoted by Senior Scientists. *Date and Location:* April 29th to May 3rd, 2019 at the Porto Conte Research Center <http://www.portocontericerche.it/en> within the Science and Technology Park of Sardinia and at the Hotel Catalunya <http://www.hotelcatalunya.it/en/>, Alghero - Sardinia (ITALY). Application Deadline: 14th April 2019 Applications: Please visit *http://neuronschool.org/ <http://neuronschool.org/>*, where you can find more information regarding costs, travel, and lodging. If you have any questions about the school or the application process, please contact enrico(a)uniss.it We look forward to your registration and to welcome you in Alghero!

March 5, 2019

Full-time research technician at the University of Vienna

by Moritz Grosse-Wentrup

Dear Colleagues: I am setting up a new research group at the University of Vienna and have an open (full time and, following a successful evaluation after one year, open-ended) position for a research technician.Besides general IT-support, the primary task of the research technician would be to maintain our EEG lab. I would appreciate if you could pass on the ad to potential candidates: https://tinyurl.com/y2ll2ak5 Informal inquiries should be sent to moritz.grosse-wentrup(a)univie.ac.at. Thanks, Moritz -- Univ.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. Moritz Grosse-Wentrup Research Group Neuroinformatics Faculty of Computer Science University of Vienna Hörlgasse 6, A-1090 Wien, Austria moritz.grosse-wentrup(a)univie.ac.at

March 4, 2019

Fruit Fly Brain Hackathon 2019

by Yiyin Zhou

Fruit Fly Brain Hackathon 2019 FFBH 2019 <http://fruitflybrain.org/hackathons>March 20, 2019Columbia University, New York, NY 10027 The 4th Fruit Fly brain Hackathon (FFBH 2019) will be held on Wednesday, March 20, 2019. The goal of the hackathon is to bring together researchers interested in developing executable models of the fruit fly brain. In this year’s hackathon, we will focus on the FlyBrainLab <http://www.bionet.ee.columbia.edu/research/ffbo/fbl> (FBL), a newly developed interactive computing platform for studying the function of executable circuits constructed from fly brain data. The hackathon is aimed at three main groups of participants: neurobiologists, modelers and software engineers. We welcome researchers working on the fruit fly brain as well as those working on other model organisms to participate and broaden the discussion in the hackathon. The Fruit Fly Brain Hackathon 2019 is organized in conjunction with the Columbia Workshop on Brain Circuit, Memory and Computation <http://fruitflybrain.org/workshops.html> on March 21-22, 2019. Participants of the hackathon are welcome to attend the workshop. Registration is free but all participants have to register <https://ffbh2019.eventbrite.com/>. (*https://ffbh2019.eventbrite.com/ <https://ffbh2019.eventbrite.com/>*). Organizers: Tingkai Liu, Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University Mehmet Kerem Turkcan, Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University Chung-Heng Yeh, Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University Yiyin Zhou, Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University More information can be found on the hackathon website: http://fruitflybrain.org/hackathons ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Best Regards, Yiyin Zhou, on behalf of the organizers -- Yiyin Zhou Associate Research Scientist Bionet Group: www.bionet.ee.columbia.edu Department of Electrical Engineering Columbia University

March 4, 2019

12ᵗʰ Advanced Scientific Programming in Python in Camerino, Italy, 2—7 September, 2019

by Jakob Jordan

12ᵗʰ Advanced Scientific Programming in Python ============================================== a Summer School by the G-Node and the University of Camerino https://python.g-node.org Scientists spend more and more time writing, maintaining, and debugging software. While techniques for doing this efficiently have evolved, only few scientists have been trained to use them. As a result, instead of doing their research, they spend far too much time writing deficient code and reinventing the wheel. In this course we will present a selection of advanced programming techniques and best practices which are standard in the industry, but especially tailored to the needs of a programming scientist. Lectures are devised to be interactive and to give the students enough time to acquire direct hands-on experience with the materials. Students will work in pairs throughout the school and will team up to practice the newly learned skills in a real programming project — an entertaining computer game. We use the Python programming language for the entire course. Python works as a simple programming language for beginners, but more importantly, it also works great in scientific simulations and data analysis. We show how clean language design, ease of extensibility, and the great wealth of open source libraries for scientific computing and data visualization are driving Python to become a standard tool for the programming scientist. This school is targeted at Master or PhD students and Post-docs from all areas of science. Competence in Python or in another language such as Java, C/C++, MATLAB, or R is absolutely required. Basic knowledge of Python and of a version control system such as git, subversion, mercurial, or bazaar is assumed. Participants without any prior experience with Python and/or git should work through the proposed introductory material before the course. We are striving hard to get a pool of students which is international and gender-balanced. Date & Location =============== 2–7 September, 2019. Camerino, Italy. Application =========== You can apply online: https://python.g-node.org/wiki/applications Application deadline: 23:59 UTC, 26 May, 2019. There will be no deadline extension, so be sure to apply on time. Be sure to read the FAQ before applying: https://python.g-node.org/wiki/faq Participation is for free, i.e. no fee is charged! Participants however should take care of travel, living, and accommodation expenses by themselves. Program ======= • Version control with git and how to contribute to open source projects with GitHub • Tidy data analysis and visualization • Testing and debugging scientific code • Advanced NumPy • Organizing, documenting, and distributing scientific code • Advanced scientific Python: context managers and generators • Writing parallel applications in Python • Profiling and speeding up scientific code with Cython and numba • Programming in teams Faculty ======= • Caterina Buizza, Personal Robotics Lab, Imperial College London, UK • Jenni Rinker, Department of Wind Energy, Technical University of Denmark, Roskilde, Denmark • Juan Nunez-Iglesias, Bioimage Analysis Research Fellow, Monash University, Australia • Nelle Varoquaux, Department of Statistics, UC Berkeley, CA, USA • Pamela Hathway, Neural Reckoning, Imperial College London, UK • Pietro Berkes, NAGRA Kudelski, Lausanne, Switzerland • Rike-Benjamin Schuppner, Institute for Theoretical Biology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany • Stéfan van der Walt, Berkeley Institute for Data Science, UC Berkeley, CA, USA • Tiziano Zito, Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany Organizers ========== For the German Neuroinformatics Node of the INCF (G-Node), Germany: • Tiziano Zito, Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany • Caterina Buizza, Personal Robotics Lab, Imperial College London, UK • Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek, Red Hat Inc., Warsaw, Poland • Jakob Jordan, Department of Physiology, University of Bern, Switzerland For the University of Camerino, Italy: • Barbara Re, Computer Science Division, School of Science and Technology, University of Camerino Italy Website: https://python.g-node.org Contact: python-info(a)g-node.org

March 4, 2019

Final Program of the Columbia Workshop on Brain Circuits, Memory and Computation, March 21-22, 2019

by Aurel A. Lazar

http://fruitflybrain.org/workshops.html Aurel http://www.bionet.ee.columbia.edu

March 3, 2019