Dear friends and colleagues,
Student applications for the next Imbizo are OPEN. Don’t
let this opportunity slip by if you are hoping to join the most
diverse neuroscience summer school at the most beautiful beach in
the world!
If you know anyone who would benefit from an extraordinary
computational neuroscience summer school, please distribute this
information as widely as you can:
SIMONS COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE IMBIZO (#Imbizo2025)
12 January - 2 February 2025, Noordhoek Beach, Cape Town, South
Africa (https://imbizo.africa/)
Application deadline: 24th July 2024 at 20:00 UTC
The Imbizo is a southern hemisphere summer school aiming to
promote computational neuroscience in Africa. It will bring
together international and local students under the tutelage of
the world's leading experts in the field. Like its international
sister courses, this three-week summer school aims to teach
central ideas, methods, and practices of modern computational
neuroscience through a combination of lectures and hands-on
project work. Mornings will be devoted to lectures on topics
across the breadth of computational neuroscience, including
experimental underpinnings and machine learning analogues. The
rest of the day will be spent working on research projects under
the close supervision of expert tutors and faculty. Individual
research projects will focus on the modeling of neurons, neural
systems, behavior, the analysis of state-of-the-art neural data,
and the development of theories to explain experimental
observations. It also includes a week focused on
neuroscience-inspired machine learning!
Who should apply?
This course is aimed at Masters and early-PhD level students,
though Honors or advanced Undergraduates may also apply.
Postdoctoral students who can motivate why the course would
benefit them are also encouraged to apply. Students should have
sufficient quantitative skills (e.g., a background in mathematics,
physics, computer science, statistics, engineering, or related
fields). Some knowledge of neural biology will be useful but not
essential. Experimental neuroscience students are encouraged to
apply but should ensure that they have a reasonable level of
quantitative proficiency (i.e., at least second-year level
mathematics or statistics and have done at least one course in
computer programming).
Course fees and Scholarships:
Course Fee: €1450 includes all accommodation, meals, social
activities, and ground transport in Cape Town.
Thanks to our generous sponsors, significant financial assistance
is available to reduce and waive fees for students, particularly
for African applicants. We also hope to provide some limited
travel bursaries for international students. If you need financial
assistance to attend Imbizo, please state so clearly in the
relevant section of your application.
Scholarships on offer:
(a) Full Scholarship includes a waived course fee (€1450) and your
economy class travel to Cape Town, which will be booked by the
Imbizo.
(b) Partial Scholarship includes a waived course fee (€1450) and
a set financial contribution towards your travel costs (paid after
arrival in Cape Town). The amount will vary on a case by case
basis.
(c) Course Scholarship includes a waived course fee (€1450), but
you will be responsible for booking and paying for your own travel
costs to Cape Town.
Note:
(a) You must ensure you have a valid passport when applying.
(b) Visa application and related costs remain the responsibility
of all accepted students.
Important dates:
Applications CLOSE 24th July 2024 at 20:00 UTC
References SUBMITTED 31st July 2024 at 20:00 UTC
Outcomes NOTIFIED mid-September 2024
Accept BY 1 week after
notifications
Imbizo STARTS 12 January 2025
Imbizo ENDS 2 February 2025
Information and application
https://imbizo.africa/
Questions?
isicn.imbizo.planning [AT] gmail.com
What is an Imbizo?
\ɪmˈbiːzɒ\ | Xhosa - Zulu
A gathering of the people to share knowledge.
View our past FACULTY and TAs: https://imbizo.africa/people/
ORGANIZERS and 2025 Affiliate Organisations:
Arif Hamid (University of Minnesota)
Peter Latham (Gatsby Unit for Computational Neuroscience)
Xaq Pitkow (Carnegie Mellon University)
Emma Vaughan (Imbizo Logistics)
Spiros Chavlis (Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas)
Sponsors
The Imbizo is made possible by the generous support from the
Simons Foundation (https://www.simonsfoundation.org/),
the International Brain Research Organisation (IBRO) (https://ibro.org/)
as well as the DeepMind, Meta, and others.
Thanks and regards
Simons Computational Neuroscience Imbizo Committee
imbizo.africa
@CompNeuroImbizo
--Spyridon Chavlis, PhD Postdoctoral Researcher and Systems Administrator Poirazi Lab Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB) Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH) Nikolaou Plastira, 100 GR 70013 Heraklion, Crete, Greece Tel: (+30) 2810 39 1264 Εmail: chavlis.spiros@gmail.com Webpage: dendrites.gr