The UK Neuroinformatics Node

WELCOME to the Neuroinformatics Node Homepage!

This is a network of UK researchers working in the emerging field of neuroinformatics. Formed in January 2008 as a successor to the UK Neuroinformatics Network, it organises a set of activities to strengthen and develop UK neuroinformatics.

The Node acts as the UK hub of the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF). This is an international body, currently subscribed to by 18 member countries. It has a programme of activities dealing with neuroinformatics issues that require coordination at an international level, such as: how to share data or models, store data long term, interlink current brain atlases, organise the best training for neuroinformatics.

Recent News

The application to set up a Neuroinformatics Special Interest Group of the British Neuroscience Association which was submitted on 7 November 2016 has now (January 2017) been approved. This will be the first Special Interest Group of the BNA! The SIG is co-chaired by Professor Leslie Smith (l.s.smith at cs dot stir dot ac dot uk) and Professor Marcus Kaiser (Marcus.Kaiser at newcastle dot ac dot uk). We are planning to use the Neuroinformatics Symposium at the BNA meeting (see next item) to launch the SIG. More information will follow!
The UK Node will be organising a Neuroinformatics Symposium at the forthcoming BNA Festival of Neuroscience 2017 event: see the Events and Projects page for more details.
The 2016 INCF Neuroinformatics Symposium was in Reading, UK, 3-4 September 2016. There were 171 attendees from all over the globe: there's some information still at the Symposium website, and the UK node's presentation is also available (also as a YouTube video).
The 2017 INCF Neuroinformatics Symposium will be in Kuala Lumpur, Aug 20-21 2017.
The UK Node, jointly with the INCF itself, held a Social at the recent FENS 2016 meeting: see the Events and Projects page for more details.
The May 2016 INCF nodes workshop was jointly held with the Japanese node's annual workshop entitled Advances in Neuroinformatics. It was hosted at the Riken WAKO. The meeting include scientific keynote talks and updates from various node activities in member countries: the UK was represented by Dr. Stephen Eglen. Key themes emerging across the two days included the resurgence of artificial intelligence techniques and the importance of text and data mining.
Professor David Willshaw will receive the third Valentino Braitenberg Award for Computational Neuroscience. This award (see http://www.nncn.de/en/bernstein-association/valentino-braitenberg-award-for-computational-neuroscience) celebrates the impact of the recipient's research on the neurosciences, and is named after Professor Valentino Braitenberg (1926-2011), a founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. It will be presented on September 21, 2016, at 3 p.m. at the the Bernstein Conference in Berlin.
The UK Node, along with eFutures, held a meeting on 3 May 2016 which brought together different types of neuroscientists (from clinical to experimental to computational modellers to neuro-engineers) to enable co-operation. The meeting was a 1 day meeting, on 3 May 2016, at Liverpool University’s campus in London.
There is now a full report on this meeting. (see also the Events & Projects tab, from where the meeting slides can be found)

Older news...

The UK Node's attempt to get Medical Research Council (MRC) funding both for the UK membership of INCF, and for the node itself was unsuccessful. I would like to personally thank all those who helped to put this proposal together. We will try again, and hope to be more successful, now that the IMNCF has altered the way that it works to make it more reflective of what the Nodes themselves need.
The INCF's eighth annual congress, Neuroinformatics 2015, took place in Cairns, Australia, 20-22 August 2015. Note that next year's is in Reading, UK!
There was a Nodes workshop in Warsaw 16-17 April 2015, the 12th INCF Nodes Workshop Node Communication and Collaborative Neuroinformatics, which the UK Node presented at. Nodes workshops are now planned to be annula, and to take place at different Node locaions.
There are new events in the near future, on the Events and Projects tab:
- 3rd Baltic-Nordic Summer School on Neuroinformatics (BNNI 2015)
The UK Node presented at the recent INCF Workshop on Node Communication and Collaborative Neuroinformatics meeting in Warsaw
Stephen Eglen has produced a list of recent UK Neuroinformatics publications: this is not intended to be exhaustive, but to show off the range and diversity of such publications.

Aims and Objectives of the Node

The Node is a forum for the UK neuroinformatics community. The Node provides a channel for discussion, a means for developing neuroinformatics, and for training in neuroinformatics, and a voice to represent the community in discussions with other scientific areas, commercial organisations, funding/governmental and international agencies.

The Node aims are:

To facilitate dialogue and promote awareness including:

improving the awareness and usage of neuroinformatics techniques particularly for those in clinical and experimental neuroscience
interactions between neuroinformatics practitioners within the UK and between the UK and other countries;
participation in INCF activities;
stimulation of interest in UK neuroinformatics within other scientific, medical and commercial communities and within funding bodies and governmental agencies.

To stimulate new work involving neuroinformatics.
To support neuroinformatics education and training.
To play a leading role in UK's strategy in neuroinformatics.
To ensure sustainability of neuroinformatics resources.

Mailing List and Monthly Newsletter

The UK Node has a mailing list for all its members. We use this to keep our members informed of our events and current neuroinformatics news.
If you wish to join it, please click here. Any member can post to the list.

The UK Node previously sent out newsletters - please click here to view previous newsletters.

Node Funding

The Node was funded until 2013 by MRC, EPSRC and BBSRC.

A new funding proposal (as an MRC Partnership Grant) was submitted at the end of July 2015 - see news item above.