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14ᵗʰ Advanced Scientific Programming in Python in Bilbao Spain, 5–11 September, 2022

by Jakob Jordan

ASPP2022: 14ᵗʰ Advanced Scientific Programming in Python ======================================================== a Summer School by the ASPP faculty and the Faculty of Engineering of the Mondragon University, Bilbao https://aspp.school 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 =============== 5–11 September, 2022. Bilbao, Spain. Application =========== You can apply online: https://aspp.school Application deadline: 23:59 UTC, Sunday 1 May, 2022. There will be no deadline extension, so be sure to apply on time. Be sure to read the FAQ before applying: https://aspp.school/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. We are in the process of securing some funds for supporting students with accommodation and living costs. Program ======= • Version control with git and how to contribute to open source projects with GitHub • Best practices in data 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 ======= • Jakob Jordan, Department of Physiology, University of Bern Switzerland • Jenni Rinker, Department of Wind Energy, Technical University of Denmark, Roskilde Denmark • Lisa Schwetlick, Experimental and Biological Psychology, Universität Potsdam Germany • Nicolas Rougier, Inria Bordeaux Sud-Ouest, Institute of Neurodegenerative Diseases, University of Bordeaux France • Pamela Hathway, GfK, Nuremberg Germany • Pietro Berkes, NAGRA Kudelski, Lausanne Switzerland • Rike-Benjamin Schuppner, Institute for Theoretical Biology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Germany • Tiziano Zito, Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Germany • Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek, Red Hat Inc., Warsaw Poland Organizers ========== Head of the organization for ASPP and responsible for the scientific program: • Tiziano Zito, Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Germany Organization team in Bilbao: • Aitor Morales-Gregorio, Theoretical Neuroanatomy, Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6), Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany • Carlos Cernuda, Data Analysis & Cybersecurity, Faculty of Engineering, Mondragon Unibertsitatea, Bilbao Spain Website: https://aspp.school Contact: info(a)aspp.school

Feb. 23, 2022

Call for proposals for workshops and tutorials at CNS*2022 Melbourne

by Thomas Nowotny

OCNS Organisation for Computational Neurosciences Dear com-neuro community, We are requesting proposals for workshops and tutorials at CNS*2022 from the international community of computational neuroscientists. The 31st Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting, CNS*2022, will be held at Melbourne, Australia, 16-20 July 2022. Proposals from all levels of faculty as well as advanced postdoctoral fellows are welcome. Tutorials are to be held on the first day and workshops on the last two days of the CNS*2022 Meeting. This is an excellent opportunity to reach international audience of computational neuroscience researchers participating in this meeting. Please see the links below for detailed information. Questions regarding workshops and tutorials should be addressed to workshops(a)cnsorg.org<mailto:workshops@cnsorg.org> or tutorials(a)cnsorg.org<mailto:tutorials@cnsorg.org> as appropriate. We are looking forward to your submissions. CALL FOR WORKSHOPS: https://www.cnsorg.org/cns-2022-call-for-workshops Priority Deadline for proposals: April 15 Jorge Mejias, Workshops Chair for CNS*2022 CALL FOR TUTORIALS: https://ocns.memberclicks.net/cns-2022-call-for-tutorials Deadline for proposals: April 15 Anca Doloc-Mihu, Tutorials Chair for CNS*2022 With kind regards, Thomas Nowotny, Vice President, on behalf of The OCNS Board of Directors -- Prof Thomas Nowotny Head of AI Research Group School of Engineering and Informatics University of Sussex Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QJ, UK Phone: +44-1273-678593 FAX: +44-1273-877873

Feb. 23, 2022

Fully funded PhD position, University of Groningen/NL

by Michael Biehl

*Last reminder, j**ust a few days left to apply! * A *fully funded PhD position* (4 years) in the *Statistical **Physics of Neural Networks* is available at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, see https://www.rug.nl/about-ug/work-with-us/job-opportunities/?details=00347-0… for details and application details. Applications *(before March 1)* are only possible through this webpage. The title of the project is "The role of the activation function for feedforward learning systems (RAFFLES)". For further information please contact Michael Biehl. -- ---------------------------------------------------------- Prof. Dr. Michael Biehl Bernoulli Institute for Mathematics, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence P.O. Box 407, 9700 AK Groningen The Netherlands Tel. +31 50 363 3997 https://www.cs.rug.nl/~biehl m.biehl(a)rug.nl

Feb. 23, 2022

NEUROTECH: Call for tutorials on Neuromorphic Computing

by Elisa Donati

Dear Colleagues, Given the success of last year’s NEUROTECH educational program, we have planned a new tutorial series for 2022! We are happy to announce a call for tutorials on the different aspects of the neuromorphic field. These tutorials will cover an aspect of active research in Neuromorphic Technology, with the aim of enabling a non-expert audience to get started on it. They will be held online via zoom, should be about 45 minutes in length, including a discussion session. Tutorials could be given by experienced researchers as well as emerging leaders who seek to disseminate their research methods to a wider audience. Presenters will benefit from the high visibility of the tutorial sessions within the NEUROTECH programme, and from the wider dissemination of their research methods and potential impact generated by other researchers. Proposals should not exceed 1 page (A4 or letter) in length. The proposal should outline the topic and indicate how the audience will benefit from it. Send your proposal by 07.03.2022 to educational(a)neurotechai.eu with the subject "Proposal for NEUROTECH Educational Tutorial". For more information: Call for Tutorials About NEUROTECH: The NEUROTECH project is committed to community building around Neuromorphic Technology. The educational programme is an essential pillar of our activities. Last year we have built a strong educational programme around a series of talks by leaders in the field (https://neurotechai.eu) Kind Regards, The NEUROTECH Educational Team

Feb. 23, 2022

Survey of the Allen Institute modeling software

by Anton Arkhipov

Dear Colleagues, We are conducting a survey about the Allen Institute’s neuroscience modeling software: https://forms.gle/R1ThdxBE98FhG1uQ6 The survey covers the Brain Modeling ToolKit, the SONATA file format, and the Visual Neuronal Dynamics visualization tool. It only takes several minutes, and we will appreciate to hear from you! Whether you are using our software, may be interested in using it, or are happily using something else, we will be glad to hear your opinion about our tools and modeling software in neuroscience in general. Please let us know what works, what doesn’t, and what new features would be helpful. Results of the survey will be used to improve our modeling software at the service of the community. This work is conducted under the NIH grant U24NS124001. Thank you, and we are looking forward to hearing from you! Anton. Anton Arkhipov Associate Investigator T: 206.548.8414 E: antona(a)alleninstitute.org<mailto:antona@alleninstitute.org> [Text Description automatically generated] alleninstitute.org<https://alleninstitute.org> brain-map.org

Feb. 23, 2022

[Meetings] CRNS Talk Series (3) - Live Talk by Dr. Séverin Lemaignan - PAL Robotics, Spain

by Amir Aly

Dear All * Apologies for cross-posting* The *Center for Robotics and Neural Systems* (CRNS) is pleased to announce the talk of *Dr. Séverin Lemaignan* who is a senior scientist at *PAL Robotics*, Spain on Wednesday, March 2nd from *11:00 am* to *12:30* *pm* (*London time*) over *Zoom*. >> *Events*: The CRNS talk series will cover a wide range of topics including social and cognitive robotics, computational neuroscience, computational linguistics, cognitive vision, machine learning, AI, and applications to autism. More details are available here: https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/research/robotics-neural-systems/whats-on <https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.plymo…> >> *Link for the next event (No Registration is Required)*: Join Zoom Meeting https://plymouth.zoom.us/j/97451532624?pwd=ZmVSUzkrT3lUNWdXNmFEekNYSjRQUT09… >> *Title of the talk*: Teaching robots autonomy in social situations *Abstract*: Participatory methodologies are now well established in social robotics to generate blueprints of what robots should do to assist humans. The actual implementation of these blueprints, however, remains a technical challenge for us, roboticists, and the end-users are not usually involved at that stage. In two recent studies, we have however shown that, under the right conditions, robots can directly learn their behaviours from domain experts, replacing the traditional heuristic-based or plan-based robot controllers by autonomously learnt social policies. We have derived from these studies a novel 'end-to-end' participatory methodology called LEADOR, that I will introduce during the seminar. I will also discuss recent progress on human perception and modeling in a ROS environment with the emerging ROS4HRI standard. >> If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me, Regards ---------------- *Dr. Amir Aly* Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Center for Robotics and Neural Systems (CRNS) School of Engineering, Computing, and Mathematics Room B332, Portland Square, Drake Circus, PL4 8AA University of Plymouth, UK

Feb. 22, 2022

9th Iberian Conference on Perception, Barcelona, June 2022

by Xavier Otazu Porter

Dear colleague, perception researcher, We are pleased to invite you to attend the 9th Iberian Conference on Perception (CIP 2022), which will be held on June 27th-29th, 2022, in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain (https://www.cip2022.org<https://www.cip2022.org/>). CIP focuses on perception, with an emphasis on, but no limitation to, several aspects of perception such as motion perception, spatial vision, stereopsis, colour, perception and action, attention and cognition, audition, multisensory integration, reading and speech, brain imaging, art and aesthetics, perception in clinical populations and computational modelling. In addition to talks on this broad range of topics, the conference will include five symposia, poster sessions, and two keynote lectures from young internationally renowned scientists, Dr Iris Groen, from the University of Amsterdam, and Prof Manuel Spitschan, from the Max Planck Institute in Tübingen.. The event will take place at the Casa Convalescència<https://uab-casaconvalescencia.org/es/> in the modernist historical complex of Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau <https://www.santpaubarcelona.org/> in Barcelona, which was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. The COVID-19 pandemic forced us to break with the biennial organisation of CIP and to cancel the 2021 edition. For this year's edition, the health and safety of our speakers, attendees and staff will be a top priority. We designed the conference around this premise. The venue and program will allow social distancing while on site and regular ventilation of the conference room. All attendees will be asked to continue to wear face masks (unless medically exempt) during the conference and throughout all the premises of the Casa Convalescència. These policies will continue to be reviewed in line with government and local authority updates. We look forward to an exciting scientific programme and rely on the renewed eagerness of the research community to submit abstracts on their recent studies. Abstracts deadline: 15th April Registration: From February 15th to 1st June The Organising Committee Dr Xavier Otazu Dr Xim Cerda-Company Dr C. Alejandro Parraga Dr Olivier Penacchio Computer Vision Center<http://www.cvc.uab.cat> CONFIDENTIALITY WARNING<http://www.cvc.uab.es/?page_id=7475>

Feb. 22, 2022

Postdoctoral position in natural language processing and neuroscience, University of Geneva, Switzerland

by Timothée Proix

Dear all, a postdoctoral position is available under the supervision of Prof. Pierre Mégevand (https://www.unige.ch/medecine/neucli/en/groupes-de-recherche/1034megevand/) and Timothée Proix (https://ndlab.ch/) at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. The project lies at the interface between natural language processing and intracranial EEG data analysis. The goal of the project is to understand the neural representations of speech production and perception in conversations. The candidate will contribute to acquisition and analysis of intracranial EEG data and speech recordings. Applicants should have prior experience with machine learning methods for natural language processing, as well as in advanced data analysis techniques. Experience in electrophysiological recordings and knowledge in neuroscience is a significant advantage. The research will be performed at the campus Biotech in the university of Geneva, in collaboration with the Geneva University Hospital. The positions are funded by the private foundation of the Geneva University Hospital, and salaries are in compliance with guidelines of the University of Geneva. The ideal start is May 2022, with some flexibility. To apply, send a motivation letter, CV, and contact information for 2-3 references, as well as any other relevant documents to the Prof. Pierre Mégevand (pierre.megevand (at) unige.ch) as well as Timothée Proix (timothee.proix (at) unige.ch). Screening of applications will start by March 2022 and will continue until the position is filled. Timothée Proix

Feb. 21, 2022

NSF Neuronex Big Brain Imaging Hybrid Workshop @ Boston University - April 7-8, 2022

by Chen, Jerry

We are proud to announce the 2022 Big Brain Imaging Workshop hosted jointly by the NSF NeuroNex Nemonic Hub as well as the Boston University Neurophotonics Center! This two-day hybrid workshop will take place at Boston University and online on Thursday, April 7th and continue on Friday, April 8th, 2022. The 2022 Big Brain Imaging Workshop is an opportunity to join in the discussion on optical approaches for cellular resolution imaging of neuronal populations that have been highly instrumental for uncovering the principles of neural circuit function. To date, the microscope technology development for imaging the nervous system has largely been focused on applications on a subset of model species with smaller, optically accessible brains (ex. c. elegans, zebrafish, mice). The ability to translate these technologies to species with brains that are both physically larger and less optically accessible remains a challenge. The topic of the workshop is focused on advancing cellular resolution brain imaging techniques in "larger" brains of mammalian species (ex. rats, cats, ferrets, marmosets, macaques). The goal is to bring neuroscientists and optical engineers together to discuss challenges and come up with potential solutions that will pave the way for the next generation of microscopes that can be applied to a greater number of model organisms. Invited Speakers Daniel Aharoni - University of California, Los Angeles Adam Charles - Johns Hopkins University Anna Devor - Boston University David Fitzpatrick - Max Planck Institute Florida Emily Gibson - University of Colorado Anschutz Prakash Kara - University of Minnesota Jerome Mertz - Boston University Kristina Nielsen - Johns Hopkins University Anitha Pasupathy - University of Washington Bijan Perasan - New York University Nicholas Priebe - University of Texas, Austin Eyal Seidemann - University of Texas, Austin Lei Tian - Boston University Alipasha Vaziri - Rockefeller University Chris Xu - Cornell University In addition to the invited speakers, spots are available for short talks by visiting the registration page and submitting a brief abstract: For more information and free registration, visit: https://nemonic.ece.ucsb.edu/index.php/Big_Brain Jerry Chen, PhD Assistant Professor Department of Biology Boston University www.chen-lab.org<http://www.chen-lab.org> jerry(a)chen-lab.org<mailto:jerry@chen-lab.org> Jerry Chen, PhD Assistant Professor Department of Biology Boston University www.chen-lab.org<http://www.chen-lab.org> jerry(a)chen-lab.org<mailto:jerry@chen-lab.org>

Feb. 21, 2022

postdoc in Computational Neuroscience, Cambridge-Columbia collaboration

by Máté Lengyel

Postdoc in Computational Neuroscience, Cambridge-Columbia collaboration We are seeking a highly creative and motivated postdoctoral fellow to work on a collaborative project between the labs of Guillaume Hennequin and Máté Lengyel at the Computational and Biological Learning Lab, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, and Daniel Wolpert at the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University. The project studies neural network mechanisms underlying the context-dependent (continual) learning of motor repertoires and ties together several threads of research recently developed in our labs, based on the following key publications (note that several are collaborative between our groups): - JB Heald, M Lengyel, DM Wolpert (2021) Contextual inference underlies the learning of sensorimotor repertoires. Nature 600:489-493. - TC Kao, MS Sadabadi, G Hennequin (2021). Optimal anticipatory control as a theory of motor preparation: a thalamo-cortical circuit model. Neuron 109:1567-1581. - TC Kao, KT Jensen, GM van de Ven, A Bernacchia, G Hennequin (2021) Natural continual learning: success is a journey, not (just) a destination. NeurIPS, https://tinyurl.com/2jfyss8c - Echeveste R, Aitchison L, Hennequin G, Lengyel M (2020) Cortical-like dynamics in recurrent circuits optimized for sampling-based probabilistic inference. Nature Neuroscience 23:1138-1149. The postdoc will be based in Cambridge, with an opportunity for regular visits to Columbia. The successful candidate will have - a strong quantitative background - demonstrable interest in theoretical neuroscience - obtained (or be close to the completion of) a PhD or equivalent in computational neuroscience, physics, mathematics, computer science, machine learning or a related field Preference will be given to candidates with - previous experience in computational neuroscience, especially with the dynamics of recurrent neural network, and function-optimized neural networks - sufficient programming skills to run numerical simulations and to use large scale optimization packages - expertise with advanced data analysis and Bayesian techniques For further details and to send your application, please go to https://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/33691/. For informal queries, please contact Guillaume Hennequin <g.hennequin(a)eng.cam.ac.uk>, Máté Lengyel <m.lengyel(a)eng.cam.ac.uk> or Daniel Wolpert <wolpert(a)columbia.edu>. Máté Lengyel -- Professor of Computational Neuroscience Computational and Biological Learning Lab Cambridge University Engineering Department Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1PZ, UK tel: +44 (0)1223 748 532, fax: +44 (0)1223 765 587 email: m.lengyel(a)eng.cam.ac.uk web: lengyellab.org

Feb. 18, 2022