We are thrilled to launch the Brain Space Initiative (BSI), an outreach program providing equal opportunity for researchers and students across the world.
Vision
We envision a world-wide venue for brain research with equal opportunities for students and investigators, regardless of race, background, or nationality. Our mission, goals, and actions will be crafted to the needs of our participants and guidance by advisory committee members.
Mission
The initial phase of this initiative will focus on non-invasive brain imaging techniques, which will gradually expand in other fields of brain science (e.g., brain optogenetics, electrophysiology) as we recruit more scientists from other disciplines to join the effort. In the first step, we are providing two resources to the public.
- Researchers from around the globe will present their latest work/findings. These presentations will be publicly available and shared immediately after recording. As part of our mission statement, individuals from different countries will have easy access to all presentations. We also provide a space to discuss presentations during and after the talks. In addition to scientific presentations, we will live-stream moderated panel discussions of controversial topics in the field. World-renowned scientists will also be invited to talk about their personal journeys and the challenges they face in their research.
- We provide specialized meeting spaces and study groups (via chat and video calls) to discuss specific topics in the field of neuroscience. We offer spaces to successful research and learning environments for our participants by expert-mediated discussion. To do so, we are reaching out to experts and colleagues to serve as group leaders during the initial phase, and push study group participants to choose leaders through elections after the initial phase. Below is a list of experts (internal for now for convenience) who have so far agreed to serve as leaders for our initial groups. We would welcome your recommendations (including you or folks on your team) for group leaders during this phase.
To facilitate interaction among researchers, we plan to launch our initiative on Slack, a commonly used, free application accessible across the world without the need for a VPN. In addition to general training and research purpose, these study groups will provide unique collaboration opportunities among their members.
In summary, the Brain Space Initiative aims to provide equal opportunity for all researchers and students. We are committed to providing a diverse international environment for collaboration, learning, sharing the latest research, and discussing controversial neuroscience topics. We look forward to developing this initiative together and will be in touch as we progress.