Neuromatch Academy: Teaching Computational Neuroscience with Global Accessibility

Neuromatch Academy (NMA)

doi:10.1016/j.tics.2021.03.018

Neuromatch Academy: Teaching Computational Neuroscience with Global Accessibility

Trends Cogn Sci. 2021 Jul;25(7):535-538. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2021.03.018. Epub 2021 May 11.

Author

Neuromatch Academy (NMA)

Collaborators

Neuromatch Academy (NMA):
Tara van Viegen¹, Athena Akrami², Kathryn Bonnen³, Eric DeWitt⁴, Alexandre Hyafil⁵, Helena Ledmyr⁶, Grace W Lindsay⁷, Patrick Mineault⁸, John D Murray⁹, Xaq Pitkow¹⁰, Aina Puce¹¹, Madineh Sedigh-Sarvestani¹², Carsen Stringer¹³, Titipat Achakulvisut¹⁴, Elnaz Alikarami¹⁵, Melvin Selim Atay¹⁶, Eleanor Batty¹⁷, Jeffrey C Erlich¹⁸, Byron V Galbraith¹⁹, Yueqi Guo²⁰, Ashley L Juavinett²¹, Matthew R Krause²², Songting Li²³, Marius Pachitariu¹³, Elizabeth Straley²⁴, Davide Valeriani²⁵, Emma Vaughan²⁶, Maryam Vaziri-Pashkam²⁷, Michael L Waskom³, Gunnar Blohm²⁸, Konrad Kording¹⁴, Paul Schrater²⁹, Brad Wyble³⁰, Sean Escola³¹, Megan A K Peters³²

Affiliations

¹ Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA. Electronic address: nma@neuromatch.io.
² Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, University College London, London, UK.
³ Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York City, NY, USA.
⁴ Champalimaud Research, Champalimaud Foundation, Lisbon, Portugal.
⁵ Centre de Recerca Matemàtica, Bellaterra, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
⁶ International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
⁷ Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, University College London, London, UK.
⁸ Montreal, QC, Canada.
⁹ Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA; Center for Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA; Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA.
¹¹ Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA.
¹² Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience, Jupiter, FL, USA.
¹³ Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Janelia Research Campus, Ashburn, VA, USA.
¹⁴ Department of Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA; Department of Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
¹⁵ Faculty of Dentistry, McGill University, Montreal, QB, Canada.
¹⁶ Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey.
¹⁷ Department of Neurobiology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹⁸ New York University Shanghai, Shanghai, China.
¹⁹ Talla, Inc., Boston, MA, USA.
²⁰ Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
²¹ Division of Biological Sciences, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
²² Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, QB, Canada.
²³ School of Mathematical Sciences, MOE-LSC and Institute of Natural Sciences, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
²⁴ Department of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA.
²⁵ Department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Boston, MA, USA; Department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
²⁶ The International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) - Simons Computational Neuroscience Imbizo, Cape Town, South Africa.
²⁷ Laboratory of Brain and Cognition, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
²⁸ Centre for Neuroscience Studies, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
²⁹ Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA; Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
³⁰ Psychology Department, Pennsylvania State University, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
³¹ Columbia University, Department of Psychiatry, Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, New York, NY, USA.
³² Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA.

PMID: 33994097
DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2021.03.018

Abstract

Neuromatch Academy (NMA) designed and ran a fully online 3-week Computational Neuroscience Summer School for 1757 students with 191 teaching assistants (TAs) working in virtual inverted (or flipped) classrooms and on small group projects. Fourteen languages, active community management, and low cost allowed for an unprecedented level of inclusivity and universal accessibility.

Keywords: Python coding; accessibility; computational neuroscience; data science; education; inclusivity.

MeSH terms

Humans
Neurosciences*