Fruit Fly Brain Hackathon 2018 FFBH 2018 <http://fruitflybrain.org/hackathons>March 14, 2018Columbia University, New York, NY 10027 We are pleased to announce the 3rd Fruit Fly Brain Hackathon (FFBH 2018). This hackathon will be focused on open neurophysiology data (electrophysiology, imaging, etc.) of, but not limited to, the fruit fly brain. The hackathon will be focused on the following topics: 1. Promoting *Neurodata Without Board* (NWB) as a standard format for storing and sharing neurophysiology data in general, and extend it to standardize the storage and distribution of fruit fly brain electrophysiology and calcium imaging data, 2. *Queryable* neurophysiology data: organizing neurophysiology data and metadata in a database to make them easily queryable, and developing comprehensive querying tools accordingly, 3. Incorporating queried neurophysiology data into computational study. The goals are to: 1. create a common language for sharing open neurophysiology data, 2. speed up pattern search in the data that can often be tedious and inefficient to do manually, 3. drive the creation of computational models and the validation of them using open 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 2018 is organized in conjunction with the Columbia Workshop on Brain Circuit, Memory and Computation on March 15-16, 2018. Participants of the hackathon are welcome to attend the workshop. Registration is free but all participants have to register <https://ffbh2018.eventbrite.com/> (*https://ffbh2018.eventbrite.com/ <https://ffbh2018.eventbrite.com/>*). Organizers: Adam Tomkins, Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, University of Sheffield Nikul Ukani, 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 Postdoctoral Research Scientist Bionet Group: www.bionet.ee.columbia.edu Department of Electrical Engineering Columbia University