Simply Neuroscience's November Newsletter: Countdown to NeuroNovember Convention!
November 10, 2024
Welcome back to our newsletter 🥳
NeuroNovember Convention Rescheduled: Nov. 23 & 24 📣
Due to logistical challenges, the Project Encephalon and Simply Neuroscience teams have rescheduled the NeuroNovember Convention 2024 to the weekend of November 23rd and 24th. If you have already registered to attend the virtual talks and workshops, you’re all set—no need to re-register. Additionally, we are actively reviewing all submitted abstracts, and decision notifications will be emailed out by the end of this week at the latest.
A Certificate of Participation is available, and guidelines have been emailed to all registered individuals. If you have not received an update email (containing the Zoom details as well), please let us know via info [at] simplyneuroscience.org
Thank you for your patience and understanding. We look forward to a weekend packed with virtual learning and community bonding—see you soon!
NeuroNovember Convention Schedule Sneak-Peek 📅
***All times are listed in Eastern Time (New York City time)***
Saturday, November 23rd
🧠 11 am - 12 pm: Graduate School Panel
Simone Mohite (PhD Candidate at University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine; spinal cord injury and neurotrauma research)
Ashley C. Lueschen (Master of Public Health student at Central Michigan University; stem cell therapy, optogenetic stimulation)
Patrick Bloniasz (PhD Candidate in Computational Neuroscience at Boston University; adjunct faculty at New York University)
Inchara Athreya (MA student in Social Sciences Research and incoming PhD student on Academic Misconduct Investigations in Higher Education Institutions at the University of Warwick)
🧠 12 - 1 pm: Fireside Chat with Alissa Mayers, MA
Alissa Mayers is the Director of Public Programs at Columbia University's Zuckerman Institute, where she works with a team to build public programming that helps to create accessible pathways to science education. She has 12+ years of experience and training in counseling, and research and evaluation.
Mayers is an alumna of Brown University (BA in Psychology and Africana Studies), The George Washington University (MA in Rehabilitation Counseling), and the University of Maryland (MA in Counseling Psychology).
🧠 1 - 2 pm: Creating Effective Presentations to Share Your Research
Effective ways to present your research while speaking to various audiences, tips to communicate the key takeaways, and more. Most importantly, we’ll discuss ways you can help grab audience attention, even when people aren’t necessarily interested in your subject area!
Hosted by Inchara Athreya (University of Warwick; Simply Neuroscience’s COO)
🧠 8 - 9 pm: Casual Attendee Social
🧠 9 - 10 pm: Introduction to Neuroethics
Explore the foundations of the field, encourage attendees to participate in interactive discussions of case studies, and provide insight into career pathways and educational resources for further learning.
Hosted by Chinmayi Balusu Kosaraju, the founder of Simply Neuroscience. She is a Columbia University alumna (BA in Medical Humanities; MPH) with a background in clinical stroke and brain injury research, neuro-epidemiology, cross-cultural neuroethics, and global health.
Sunday, November 24th
🧠 9 - 10 am: Poster Presentations (Part 1)
🧠 11 am - 12 pm: Causality and the Law -- How neuroscience and biological determinism impact punishment intuitions
Intro to ideas at the intersection of neuroscience, physics, and criminal justice. Understanding how the physical principles of causality are relevant to neurobiology and, in turn, criminal justice and intuitions about blame and punishment.
Hosted by Dr. Mia Thomaidou, a Fellow in Neuroscience & Society at the Dana Foundation, where she supports multidirectional community engagement with neuroscience. Her work has focused on applications of (neuro)science and AI in the context of punishment, sentencing, and criminal justice policy.
🧠 12 - 1 pm: Fireside Chat with Safa Karman, LLM, MPP
Safa Karman is an investigative journalist and founder of Reveala. She is the first Yemeni citizen to earn a degree from Harvard Law School, and also holds a master’s degree from Oxford University.
🧠 1 - 2 pm: Introduction to Best Practice Computational Reproducibility in Python
Topics include structuring code for clarity using unit testing, creating modular and reusable scripts, managing dependencies, and using version control with Git.
Ideal for new researchers not formally trained in computational sciences, this workshop provides practical strategies to make projects both shareable and rigorously reproducible in any computational biological setting.
Hosted by Patrick Bloniasz (Boston University; New York University; Simply Neuroscience’s Board President)
🧠 5 - 6 pm: Poster Presentations (Part 2)
🧠 6 - 7 pm: Neuro Book Club — The Power of Words
Combining business, neuroscience, and self-help, The Power of Words explains language’s reflective property: the capacity of a statement to modify what it describes, above all to the speaker--and how this impacts our daily lives. The author reveals that our minds are much more malleable than we think—we retain the same ability to learn and change throughout our lives. By understanding this, we can rewrite our own narratives and break free from self-defeating and limiting beliefs.
No need to finish the entire book before the book club — we welcome all who are interested in this topic to join in discussing overall themes.
***Last but not least, we are also finalizing logistics for a speaker talk from a former neurosurgeon turned neuro-oncology researcher and neurotechnology thought leader. Stay tuned—date and time TBA***
***Interested in hosting a 1-hour workshop related to neuroscience career guidance or professional development at NeuroNovember? We’re open to your suggestions! Email us at info [at] simplyneuroscience.org. Past examples are available on our YouTube channel.
Neuroscience Mentor Database 🤝
Interested in connecting with neuroscience professionals to learn more about their career paths? Have questions about pursuing neuroscience but feeling unsure about who to ask? We’re grateful to share that 210+ neuroscience students and professionals have signed up to share their expertise with our community members.
If you are an undergraduate or graduate student, recent graduate, postdoctoral researcher, or working professional in the neuroscience field, we would love for you to consider sharing your profile too. Thank you in advance!
Neuro Book Recommendations 📚
Calling all bookworms: have you recently read a neuroscience or psychology-related book that you enjoyed? We’re looking to grow our list of book recommendations for brain enthusiasts, and we would love to hear your suggestions! Please email us at info [at] simplyneuroscience.org with (1) the title and author of the book, (2) a 150-200 word summary—no spoilers—and what you appreciated about it. Also, please let us know if you would like your recommendation to be credited with your name and photo, or if you would prefer to remain anonymous.
The Synapse Podcast: College Neuro Network Series 🎓
The College Neuro Network series is intended to help guide high school students who are interested in pursuing a neuroscience-related concentration in college. The series seeks to gain insight into the neuroscience department and opportunities at leading institutions by interviewing both undergraduate students as well as professors and faculty members. By doing this, we hope to help ease high school students’ school selection process during the busy application season.
Thank you to our sponsor: Consensus 🙌
Want to responsibly use AI to conduct your research faster? Consensus is an AI research assistant designed to help you find and summarize scientific research. It searches academic papers for relevant findings, especially in response to questions about health, social science, technology, and more. Each response is backed by citations from research papers with easy-to-understand summaries of the main findings.
Consensus is offering 1 year of free Consensus Premium to all Simply Neuroscience subscribers who claim it, worth $150 USD. This is a limited-time offer. The code expires on November 30th, 2024. Get in quick!
Use code: THENEUROSPECIAL at checkout 👇
Broader Community Events, Opportunities, and Resources 🧠
November 19th Application Deadline: Computation & Cognition Tübingen Summer Internship (CaCTüS) at Max Planck Institutes
November 20th Symposia Submission Deadline: Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) Regional Meeting in Oslo, Norway, in June 2025
February 1st Submission Deadline: Neuroscience for Kids Drawing Contest
February 3rd-6th: Black Men’s Brain Health Conference
Rolling: Senior Fellow, Dana Career Network in Neuroscience & Society
Rolling: Communications Assistant, Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS)
Rolling: Science Reporting Fellow, The Transmitter
P.S. While we are connected with some organizations whose opportunities are listed here, the Simply Neuroscience team is not directly involved in organizing the listed initiatives. Please visit the hyperlinked websites to learn more and contact the organizers.
Stay tuned for further news 🧠
Any questions, suggestions, or ideas? Opportunities or events you would like to share with the SN community? Feel free to contact us at info@simplyneuroscience.org