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Allen Institute Modeling Software Workshop
by Anton Arkhipov Jan. 19, 2022

Jan. 19, 2022

Join us for the inaugural Allen Institute Modeling Software Workshop in beautiful Seattle, on July 25-26, 2022! https://alleninstitute.org/what-we-do/brain-science/events-training/2022-mo… Sponsored by the NIH BRAIN program, this workshop is organized by the Allen Institute and our collaborators at the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This 2-day in-person* workshop will consist of interactive seminars and hands-on computational work. It will focus on teaching the skills for building and simulating complex and heterogeneous network models grounded in real biological data. The tools covered by the workshop include: * The SONATA file format<https://github.com/AllenInstitute/sonata> for multiscale neuronal network models and simulation output, supporting standardized and computationally efficient storage and exchange of models. * The Brain Modeling ToolKit (BMTK)<https://alleninstitute.github.io/bmtk/> – a Python-based software package for building and simulating large-scale neural network models at multiple levels of resolution. * The Visual Neuronal Dynamics (VND)<http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vnd/> – a program for displaying, animating, and analyzing neural network models using 3D graphics and built-in scripting. Workshop Topics: * Building heterogenous neural networks at different levels of resolution * Simulating networks of biophysically detailed, compartmental neuronal models * Simulating networks of point-neuron models * Providing realistic spiking inputs to the neural networks * Simulating perturbations * Simulating extracellular electric field * Using and sharing models in the SONATA format * Visualizing network models’ structure and dynamics in 3D We are eager to host a diverse audience, and we encourage trainees, scientists, and PIs to apply. Prior experience in modeling is not required or expected. The Allen Institute strives to make training opportunities available on a fair and equitable basis. Some travel funding is available for participants with financial need. Please indicate on your application whether such support is needed. Applications will be evaluated on a need-blind basis. There is no fee to participate in the workshop. Applications are due on March 15. All applicants will be notified of the status of their application by May 20. *If conducting the workshop in person becomes impossible due to covid-related safety concerns, it will be replaced by an online workshop on the same dates. See more information and apply here: https://alleninstitute.org/what-we-do/brain-science/events-training/2022-mo… 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

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Braincom online international workshop on Current advances on speech neural decoding and prostheses: Jan 26, 2022 (free)
by Blaise Yvert Jan. 18, 2022

Jan. 18, 2022

Dear Colleagues, It is a pleasure to announce the following online workshop organized within the EU Braincom project on Current advances on speech neural decoding and prostheses. This event will feature the current work of EU/UK and US groups in the field. It will be held on January 26, 2022 The program and connection details can be found at the following page : https://sites.google.com/view/braincomspeechprosthesesws/accueil It is free to attend, so don't hesitate to connect and spread the information With my best regards and wishes for 2022, Blaise Yvert. -- Blaise Yvert, PhD. Inserm Research Director Team Neurotechnology and Network Dynamics Grenoble Institute of Neuroscience U1216 Inserm and Univ Grenoble Alpes UFR Chimie Biologie Bâtiment Biologie B 3e étage 2280 rue de la piscine 38400 Saint Martin d'Hères France Tel (admin). +33 4 56 52 03 73 Tel (direct). +33 4 56 52 03 74 Tel (lab). +33 4 56 52 03 81 Tel (mobile). +33 6 32 88 75 90 https://www.neurotech-lab.fr/ https://sites.google.com/view/blaise-yvert/accueil https://neurosciences.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/ http://www.braincom-project.eu/

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Josh Tenenbaum speaking in Developing Minds global online lecture series, January 27, 16:00 UTC
by Jochen Triesch Jan. 17, 2022

Jan. 17, 2022

Dear colleagues, you are cordially invited to the following talk in the Developing Minds global online lecture series (https://sites.google.com/view/developing-minds-series/home) Josh Tenenbaum, MIT "Reverse Engineering Human Cognitive Development: What do we start with, and how do we learn the rest?“ This live event will take place on: January 27, 2022 16:00 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) 17:00 CET (Central European Time) 11:00 EST (Eastern Standard Time) 01:00 JST, January 28 (Japan Standard Time) Abstract: What would it take to build a machine that grows into intelligence the way a person does — that starts like a baby, and learns like a child!? AI researchers have long debated the relative value of building systems with strongly pre-specified knowledge representations versus learning representations from scratch, driven by data. However, in cognitive science, it is now widely accepted that the analogous “nature versus nurture?” question is a false choice: explaining the origins of human intelligence will most likely require both powerful learning mechanisms and a powerful foundation of built-in representational structure and inductive biases. I will talk about our efforts to build models of the starting state of the infant mind, as well as the learning algorithms that grow knowledge through early childhood and beyond. These models are expressed as probabilistic programs, defined on top of simulation engines that capture the basic dynamics of objects and agents interacting in space and time. Learning algorithms draw on techniques from program synthesis and probabilistic program induction. I will show how these models are beginning to capture core aspects of human cognition and cognitive development, in terms that can be useful for building more human-like AI. I will also talk about some of the major outstanding challenges facing these and other models of human learning. Bio: Josh Tenenbaum is Professor of Computational Cognitive Science at MIT in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines (CBMM). He received his PhD from MIT in 1999, and taught at Stanford from 1999 to 2002. His long-term goal is to reverse-engineer intelligence in the human mind and brain, and use these insights to engineer more human-like machine intelligence. His current research focuses on the development of common sense in children and machines, the neural basis of common sense, and models of learning as Bayesian program synthesis. His research group's papers have been recognized with awards at multiple conferences in Cognitive Science, Computer Vision, AI, Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making, and Robotics. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contributions in Psychology from the American Psychological Association (2008), the Troland Research Award from the National Academy of Sciences (2011), the Howard Crosby Warren Medal from the Society of Experimental Psychologists (2016), the R&D Magazine Innovator of the Year award (2018), and a MacArthur Fellowship (2019). He is a fellow of the Cognitive Science Society, the Society for Experimental Psychologists, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Web: https://web.mit.edu/cocosci/josh.html To attend the talk, please register at: https://sites.google.com/view/developing-minds-series/home Kind regards, Jochen Triesch -- Prof. Dr. Jochen Triesch Johanna Quandt Chair for Theoretical Life Sciences Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies and Goethe University Frankfurt http://fias.uni-frankfurt.de/~triesch/ Tel: +49 (0)69 798-47531 Fax: +49 (0)69 798-47611

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fully funded PhD position, Univ. of Groningen, NL
by Michael Biehl Jan. 17, 2022

Jan. 17, 2022

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. 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 contact M. 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

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AREADNE 2022 2nd Call for Abstracts
by John Pezaris Jan. 14, 2022

Jan. 14, 2022

AREADNE 2022 Research in Encoding and Decoding of Neural Ensembles Nomikos Conference Centre, Santorini, Greece 28 June - 2 July 2022 http://areadne.org info(a)areadne.org * * * * SECOND CALL FOR ABSTRACTS * * * * Dear Colleague, We would like to remind you that abstracts for poster presentation at AREADNE 2022 are coming due shortly. AREADNE 2022 will once again bring scientific leaders from around the world to present their theoretical and experimental work on the functioning of neuronal ensembles in an informal yet spectacular setting, and with a relaxed pace that emphasizes interaction. Please see the Call for Abstracts for additional details, including links for templates, at https://areadne.org/call-for-abstracts Submissions of abstracts for poster presentations are due by 21 January 2022; notifications will be provided by 22 February 2022. We strongly encourage potential attendees to submit an abstract as presenters have registration priority. For information about the conference, please refer to the main web page https://areadne.org or send email to us at info(a)areadne.org. We hope to see you at AREADNE 2022, Nicholas Hatsopoulos and John Pezaris, Co-Chairs AREADNE 2022 --- John S. Pezaris, Ph.D. AREADNE 2022 Co-Chair Harvard Medical School Massachusetts General Hospital 55 Fruit Street Boston, MA 02114, USA john(a)areadne.org

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INCF IC preprint: Recommendations for repositories and scientific gateways from a neuroscience perspective
by Heather Topple Jan. 14, 2022

Jan. 14, 2022

The INCF Infrastructure Committee (IC) - which provides recommendations for the strategic direction of INCF's infrastructure strategy and development - has a preprint available in arXiv. The preprint, titled *Recommendations for repositories and scientific gateways from a neuroscience perspective*, is a set of recommendations that can apply to a wide and diverse range of digital services, both repositories and science gateways, for data as well as software. These recommendations have neurosciences as their primary use case but are often general. Congratulations to authors and members Malin Sandström, Mathew Abrams, Jan Bjaalie, Mona Hicks, David Kennedy, Arvind Kumar, JB Poline, Prasun Roy, Paul Tiesinga, Thomas Wachtler, and Wojtek Goscinski! Learn more about it here: http://bit.ly/INCFICpreprintblog Read the paper here: bit.ly/INCFICpreprintarXiv Please feel free to forward this email to anyone in your network you feel would be interested. All the best, /Heather ---------------------------- Heather Topple, BSc *Project Assistant* *Development and Communications* International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility Secretariat Karolinska Institutet. Nobels väg 15A, SE-171 77 Stockholm. Sweden <https://www.google.com/maps/search/Nobels+v%C3%A4g+15A,+SE-171+77+Stockholm…> Email: heather(a)incf.org Phone: +46 085 248 70 65 incf.org neuroinformatics.incf.org

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Working group publication: Active Segmentation for ImageJ
by Heather Topple Jan. 13, 2022

Jan. 13, 2022

INCF's Active Segmentation for ImageJ working group - including GSOC students - has just published a paper in Brain Sciences as part of a special issue on neuroinformatics and signal processing. Congratulations to mentors Dimiter Prodanov & Sumit Vohra, and GSOC students Mukesh Gupta, Sanjeev Dubay, Joanna Stachera, Raghavendra Singh Chauhan, & Piyumal Demotte! Learn more about it here: bit.ly/INCFwgActiveSegblog Read the paper here: bit.ly/ActiveSegmentationpaper Please feel free to forward this email to anyone in your network you feel would be interested. All the best, ---------------------------- The INCF Secretariat International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility Secretariat Karolinska Institutet. Nobels väg 15A, SE-171 77 Stockholm. Sweden <https://www.google.com/maps/search/Nobels+v%C3%A4g+15A,+SE-171+77+Stockholm…> Phone: +46 085 248 70 65 incf.org neuroinformatics.incf.org

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Shanahan Foundation Fellowship at the Interface of Data and Neuroscience - apply now!
by Eric Shea-Brown Jan. 12, 2022

Jan. 12, 2022

Overview The Shanahan Foundation Fellowship at the Interface of Data and Neuroscience is a three-year fellowship program that aims to: · Integrate data scientists in neuroscience research · Challenge traditional approaches to neuroscience · Provide multidisciplinary, multi-organizational co-mentorship · Provide a network and community · Support career development in data science The fellowship is co-hosted by the Allen Institute and the University of Washington (through the eScience Institute and the Computational Neuroscience Center) and is directed by Dr. Christof Koch at the Allen Institute. Neuroscience needs data scientists. The brain represents one of the most complex challenges facing science today. And now with advances in our methods to study the brain—Neuropixel probes that can record from 1000 neurons at once, growing consensus on data standards across laboratories—the field is flooded with data that needs interpretation. The skills of data scientists are essential to springboard the field to the next stage of discoveries. Towards that end, the Shanahan Foundation Fellowship was created to bring fresh perspectives into the field, encouraging data scientists from outside neuroscience to come and work with leading investigators at the Allen Institute and UW. The Allen Institute is unique in its infrastructure and pipeline that enables the production of standardized, reproducible data on the brain (as evidenced by our vast data banks <http://www.brain-map.org/>). Together with our collaborators at the UW computational Neuroscience Center and eScience Institute, we provide data scientists with the ideal opportunity and resources to mine for novel insights and discoveries. Details You do not need experience in neuroscience to apply. The goal of the fellowship is to provide opportunities to non-traditional applicants who would not typically be funded by the typical postdoctoral fellowships in neuroscience. The fellowship has been purposefully designed to give fellows the time and mentorship to get up to speed in a new field and new data collection techniques and methods. Fellows will be employed by the Allen Institute as either a Scientist I or a Scientist II (with a matching salary) and will receive an affiliate postdoctoral appointment at UW. During the three-year fellowship, fellows will identify a mentor at the Allen Institute, where the fellows will be based. Fellows will select a co-mentor at the University of Washington who will provide additional guidance on a project designed by the fellow, focused on quantitative analysis of neuroscience data available through the Allen Institute’s vast data banks <http://www.brain-map.org/> – ranging from molecular, genomic, transcriptional, physiological, morphological, anatomical and functional whole-brain level in the brains of mice, non-human primates and humans – or through ongoing laboratory work. Each fellow will have the opportunity to mentor a fully-funded UW undergraduate or postbaccalaureate research assistant who helps with their research for 3-12 months. Fellows will participate in the postdoctoral career development program at the University’s e-Science Institute and the UW Computational Neuroscience Center. The eSciences Institute offers regular workshops on key topics including cloud computing, python and reproducibility. New fellows will attend the annual Summer Workshop on the Dynamic Brain <https://alleninstitute.org/what-we-do/brain-science/events-training/summer-…> where they will learn how to apply data science skills to neuroscience data and questions. Throughout the three years, fellows will be supported in developing a network in the neuroscience field and sharing their progress with peers at conferences. Up to three fellows will be selected to begin in Fall 2022. Eligibility Requirements Applicants must be data scientists in a broad sense, with a Ph.D. in a quantitative field such as computer science, statistics, electrical engineering, physics, mathematics or biology with a background in statistical, computational and machine learning methods. Ph.D.’s should have been awarded in the last 3 years. One goal of the fellowship is to build a network of collaborators, as such, priority will be given to applicants who are not currently postdoctoral fellows or scientists at the University of Washington or the Allen Institute. We believe high-quality science can only be produced when it includes different perspectives. We are building an environment of diversity and inclusion and encourage people from all backgrounds to apply for this fellowship. Application Instructions For full consideration, please submit your application by February 1, 2022. Applications may continue to be considered after this deadline on a rolling basis until positions are filled. Learn more and apply on the Shanahan Fellowship Website <https://alleninstitute.org/what-we-do/brain-science/careers/shanahan-founda…>. https://alleninstitute.org/what-we-do/brain-science/careers/shanahan-founda… <https://alleninstitute.org/what-we-do/brain-science/careers/shanahan-founda…> Applications must include: · A curriculum vitae from the applicant · Two letters of support from advisors and other mentors · A one-page personal statement from the applicant describing their history, activities, and interests as an individual (especially those outside of science) which may give the committee a greater sense of you as a person and your ability to simultaneously interact with and challenge traditional scientific fields. · A two- to three-page research statement from the applicant describing their prior research, interests in applying data science to the field of neuroscience, potential research interests (including tools they are familiar with) and how this fellowship aligns with their career goals. · The choice of the final advisor/co-advisor will be accomplished during the first year of this fellowship. Questions? Email: shanahan.fellow(a)alleninstitute.org <mailto:shanahan.fellow@alleninstitute.org>

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Summer workshop on the dynamic brain -- apply now!
by Eric Shea-Brown Jan. 12, 2022

Jan. 12, 2022

Applications are now open for the 2022 Summer Workshop on the Dynamic Brain. Founded by Adrienne Fairhall and Christof Koch, this annual two-week course is co-hosted by the Allen Institute MindScope Program and the Computational Neuroscience Center at the University of Washington. The Summer Workshop on the Dynamic Brain is an intensive, project-based residential course with a focus on the neurobiology of sensory processing, coding, and neural population dynamics. This program is intended for researchers at the graduate and postdoctoral level with an interest in developing the intersection of their scientific knowledge and their computational skills. Learn more and apply at https://alleninstitute.org/what-we-do/brain-science/events-training/summer-… Applications are due Feburary 1, 2022. Please contact dynamicbrain(a)alleninstitute.org with any questions.

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Women in Memory Research - Workshop - March 7-9, 2022
by Vinita Samarasinghe Jan. 11, 2022

Jan. 11, 2022

In conjunction with International Women's Day the FOR 2812 is organising its first “*Women in Memory Research*” event from *March 7-9, 2022.* The percentage of senior female university researchers in our field (in Germany) lies between 21% and 29%. Our goal is to increase these numbers! So come and learn what an academic career looks like at the Ruhr University Bochum and discover its advantages. You'll be introduced to the university and it's support structures, be able to participate in university wide programs, meet with female faculty, listen to some amazing scientific talks, present your research, and see what collaborative research looks like in the RUB memory research community. Sounds exciting? *Who can apply:*Female master’s students in their final year of study and recently graduated master’s students who are looking into an academic career in the area of memory research/neuroscience. Applicants must have excellent grades and be able to communicate in English. Selection of participants is competitive. We only have space for 12 participants! *How to apply:*Send your application including a one page letter of motivation, a current CV, master’s transcripts and a letter of recommendation from one of your professors. Your application should be sent, as a single PDF document, to Vinita Samarasinghe @for2812@rub.deby January 23, 2022. If you need child care or any other support please note this in your application. *What to expect:*We will provide accommodation and cover travel costs of up to 500 Euro (some meals are included). The program will be offered in English; however, certain programs offered by the Ruhr University in conjunction with International Women's Day may be only available in German. You will be asked to present your current research in the form of a poster. *Contact:*Vinita Samarasinghe,for2812(a)rub.de, Tel: +49 234 32 27996, https://for2812.rub.de -- Vinita Samarasinghe M.Sc., M.A. Science Manager Arbeitsgruppe Computational Neuroscience Institut für Neuroinformatik Ruhr-Universität Bochum, NB 3/73 Postfachnummer 110 Universitätstr. 150 44801 Bochum Tel: +49 (0) 234 32 27996 Email:samarasinghe@ini.rub.de

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