A week-long program for young computational
neuroscience professors to talk about rigorous science, mentoring,
lab management, and networking in a stunning retreat setting. Do
great science as a community and have fun doing so.
(August 23-30, 2025; Kingston, ON, Canada)
Meet the facilitators
Cognitive Neuroscientist at UC Irvine
Megan researches metacognition and perceptual
decision-making. As Neuromatch President, she enhances global
education in computational neuroscience, building inclusive,
scalable learning platforms to break barriers in the field.
Psychologist and Neuroscientist at Princeton University
Yael leads the Niv Lab at Princeton, focusing on the neural and computational mechanisms of learning and decision-making. Renowned for her mentorship, she established a comprehensive training program and real-time feedback system for professors.
NeroAI researcher at Amaranth and Advocate for Open Science
Patrick authors the xcorr.net blog, writes on
reproducible research and lab culture, and develops resources
for open science. He’s creating a book to guide labs in
collaborative, data-sharing practices.
Neuroscientist at Columbia and Editor
Hannah, a former editor at Nature Neuroscience, advances open
science and collaboration. As Project Director at Columbia and
Director of the International Brain Laboratory, she fosters
groundbreaking neuroscience initiatives and promotes
reproducibility.
Meet the hosts
Computational Neuroscientist at Queen's University
Gunnar focuses on understanding the neural mechanisms of
sensorimotor integration and control. He has co-taught the
in-person summer school CoSMo for seven years, has co-founded
Neuromatch, and is dedicated to advancing neuroscience
education through interactive and participatory learning
methods.
Bioengineer and Computational Neuroscientist at U Penn
Konrad's interdisciplinary research spans computational
neuroscience, machine learning, and data science. Dr. Kording
is particularly interested in neuroAI and Causality as well as
issues of rigor in science. As a co-founder of Neuromatch
Academy, he is passionate about democratizing access to
high-quality education in computational neuroscience.
Join Konrad and Gunnar for a week-long summer program aimed at young professors in systems and computational neuroscience. We will share insights on conducting impactful research, mentoring effectively, navigating administrative tasks, and finding joy in academia.
When we started as assistant professors, we had to pick up,
largely by trial and error, how to do good science,
mentor students, navigate the administrative side of our labs,
and enjoy ourselves doing so. While we do not have solutions
to all these problems, we picked up a thing or two and, above
all, made friends along the way who have deep insight into
specific aspects of the process. This summer program is aimed
at teaching what they know and building a supportive
environment within the group and beyond, with a target
audience of young professors in systems and computational
neuroscience.
Participants will be strictly limited to 30 to ensure an excellent instructor to participant ratio. As the organizers, we are confronted with the difficult task of selecting the participants from all qualified applications.
The organizers will evaluate all applications based on the submitted material. We are particularly interested in understanding your motivation for attending this summer school; how it would impact your career and how external referees judge your potential to meet those career goals. In order to ensure that everyone benefits as much as possible from this summer school, we will also take the appropriateness of your educational background into account. The selection of participants will therefore be based upon how much they would benefit from this training opportunity.
Free!
Cost will include, accommodation and 3 meals/day (but not
travel - that's on you).
You will need a CV.
Mode of learning
Our goal is to be maximally personalized: We want to talk about
your research, the nature of your lab and what
success and fun means to you. We did this at CoSMo and
we feel that it can be transformative. The participants are all
young professors, and hence learning is much more participatory
than in traditional summer schools. Out of this arises a
multi-scale program. Lots of one-on-one work with one another in
pairs. Wonderful lecturers but again a focus on localized
problems with role-playing and small-group work. A beautiful
location that allows us to truly engage with one another.
All present lecturers will help in the teaching of all
components as possible.
| Dates | Lecturers | Theme |
|---|---|---|
| TBD |
all participants |
Learning from one another (what
we learned starting our labs). We will share the
learnings about good science, networking and community
building that have worked in the labs of the
participants (and/or their mentors). |
| TBD |
Gunnar Blohm Megan Peters Konrad Körding |
Principles of good science (Building good
science principles into lab reality). We will go
through the goals of our own science, where we are
going, and why, focusing both on the big scale logic
of science and the ways of avoiding rigor traps. |
| TBD |
Konrad Körding Hannah Bayer |
Abstract workshop (as a way of getting to
know one another). We will read, edit, brainstorm,
improve, scope abstracts, working on abstracts the
participants bring. As part of this we will discover
how the world sees us as scientists. And by going
through one another's abstracts we will also learn
more deeply what everyone is working on. The workshop
will contain live editing, small group discussions,
and one-one-one components. Co-taught by Hannah
Bayer, a former editor of Nature Neuroscience who
played a pivotal role in shaping the journal's
content. |
| TBD |
Yael Niv | Mentorship workshop (as a way of helping our
labs be successful and happy). We will think through
our mentorship processes. On top of some interactive
lecturing, we will extensively roleplay in small
subgroups through difficult situations faced by
laboratories and professors. Taught by Yael Niv who
has established a wonderful term-long mentorship
training program for professors and runs an amazing
real-time mentorship feedback system. |
| TBD |
Megan Peters Gunnar Blohm |
Management (Managing the Lab and our time,
dealing with administration, prioritization).
Topics will include practical aspects of finance, of
hiring, of conflict resolution, and of delegation of
tasks. We will go through the exercise of making
mid-term plans for our labs and improving them with
one-on-one and group approaches. Co-taught by Megan
Peters who manages 2 nonprofits and has the most
organized lab we've ever seen. |
| TBD |
Patrick Mineault Hannah Bayer |
Open science and code (How to build a lab
culture that produces code that the lab can actually
use in the future). We will go through the key ideas
on how to interface with an open science system. How
can we avoid reinventing the wheel? How can we find
data relevant to our interests? How can we collaborate
on data and analyses? A lot of this will involve small
group collaboration sessions involving
experimentalists and theoreticians. Taught by Hannah
Bayer, and Patrick Mineault of xcorr.org who wrote an
online book on this topic. |
| TBD |
Konrad Körding Hannah Bayer |
Paper and Grant writing (How to efficiently
write Papers and Grants). We will run a set of
sessions on how to structure and write papers and
grants. In a way that is targeted to the individual
participants. One-on-one feedback, small group
discussion, and overall group work on individual
writing pieces will be used. Taught by Hannah Bayer,
and Konrad Körding whose paper on structuring papers
has had more than 1,000,000 downloads. |
| TBD |
all | Networking (How to network efficiently). The
entire summer program is simultaneously a networking
program. Working heavily in small groups will enable
all participants to deeply get to know one another, as
scientists and as people. |
Are you not a professor yet? Check out our
friends at Neuromatch
academy. Thousands of students, unlimited learning!
Brought to you by a highly overlapping team to this summer
school.
Better science every day. C4R acts as
co-organizer for this summer school.
