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Message from the Directors
Welcome everyone to the end of year edition of the INCF newsletter! 2015 has been a productive year which saw Malaysia join our international network, 2 Node launches, 2 Node workshops, 4 exhibitions at conferences, 17 Google Summer of Code projects, 19 INCF Program-related events, new collaborations (such as the Allen Brain Institute’s Big Neuron project, Microsoft Health), expansion of the CENTER-TBI initiative to Australia and China, the start of a new initiative on data sharing for dementia research, and support for 4 training courses.
At the INCF Governing Board meeting in late November, the Board and Secretariat celebrated a decade of INCF. As we now draw to the end of the second phase of operations, we would like to thank all of the INCF community and collaborators who have contributed so much to the organisation over the past decade. The third phase of INCF begins at a point in time where the field of neuroinformatics has emerged as a major and necessary enabler in modern data-intensive neuroscience. This is an exciting time of opportunity for the field and for our organisation. We look forward to working with the community to develop and expand activities as INCF launches into phase 3!
If you have not already done so, please download the 2016-2020 Strategic Plan.
We wish you a happy and peaceful festive season and much success in the coming new year.
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INCF Governing Board members and Secretariat staff at the last Board meeting of Phase 2. Countries represented in this meeting: Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and UK. Via video: Malaysia, US, and Australia.
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INCF celebrates 10 years!
At the INCF Governing Board meeting in late November, the Board and Secretariat celebrated a decade of INCF, counted from the formal start of INCF with eight founding member countries in August 2005. During that time, INCF has established Nodes in eighteen member countries, run four Scientific Programs with a core volunteer community of over 200 scientists, and arranged or sponsored more than 150 courses, conferences, workshops and meetings across five continents.
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2nd Belgian Neuroinformatics Congress
The INCF Belgian Node arranged the 2nd Belgian Neuroinformatics Congress on December 4. The congress met very enthusiastic reception from the Belgian Neuroscience community. Over 80 participants gathered in the building of a beautiful old Franciscan monastery, which currently hosts the Irish College in Leuven. There were two distinguished keynote speakers, Pascal Fries from ESI Max Planck institute for neuroscience and Rainer Goebel from Maastricht University.
Over the lunch break the participants had the chance to discuss their posters, about 40 in total, and get feedback from the speakers and fellow participants. Additionally, some participants from the Netherlands also attended, including Rembrandt Bakker from the Dutch INCF node. The congress was sponsored by FWO, IMEC, the Catholic University of Leuven, University of Ghent and University of Antwerp.
Poster abstracts can be viewed on the event page. There is also an image gallery with photos from the event. |
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INCF at SfN 2015
This year marks the 10th anniversary of INCF exhibiting at SfN - and the tenth consecutive year with demos of neuroscience tools and projects from our Programs, our Nodes and the community at large (see schedule and abstracts). Our warm thanks to all presenters and contributors!
This year INCF also arranged a Neurodata Without Borders info social as well as the official SfN-sponsored neuroinformatics social, and co-sponsored the popular SfN Banter (see blog post). |
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Succesful Malaysian Node launch
On October 9, the new INCF Malaysia Node hosted their annual workshop on Intelligent Signal and Imaging for Biomedical Applications, attended by just over 100 people. The workshop included the official launch of the Node, attended by the Deputy Minister for Higher Education. INCF's Executive Director Linda Lanyon made a presentation and took part in the press conference and discussions with the Deputy Minister. INCF Japan Node’s Yoko Yamaguchi and INCF Victoria Node’s David Abbott gave presentations about work in their Nodes. |
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Neurodata Without Borders 1st release
Neurodata Without Borders ( www.nwb.org) is a broad initiative - supported by INCF, Kavli, Allen Brain, GE, and Janelia Farm - that aims to standardize neuroscience data and remove barriers to data sharing in the neuroscience field. A paper describing their first collaborative project, finding a common data format for neurophysiology, has just been published in Neuron. The alpha version of the data format, along with APIs and tools, is available on the NWB Github page. The chosen format was strongly influenced by existing systems and standards, including those developed within INCF (see the INCF requirements document).
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