Student Support for the Seventh International Brain-Computer Interface Meeting

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Brain-computer interface (BCI) research explores avenues of controlling devices directly from brain signals. Thus, BCI technology is a powerful control option for neuro-prosthetic limbs, as well as a potential communication option for people with severe motor disabilities or disorders such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), brainstem stroke, cerebral palsy, and spinal cord injury, who may have little or even no muscle control and therefore no means of communication with the external world. The International Brain-Computer Interface (IBCI) meeting is the flagship conference for the field, the seventh of which will be held May 21-25, 2018, on the Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove,, California. Effective BCI research requires interdisciplinary interactions involving neuroscience, psychology, engineering, mathematics, computer science, and clinical rehabilitation, and the IBCI meeting serves as a critical catalyst for technology dissemination, new collaborations, and educational opportunities for students. The primary source of funding for the meeting is the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This NSF funding will enable another 22 students, including undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, to attend and participate in the conference. The organizers are planning innovations to make the 2018 event the most valuable yet. For the first time the conference will include a series of 12 one-hour masterclasses, six of which will meet in parallel on Wednesday evening, and the other six will meet in parallel on Thursday afternoon. Each masterclass will have a senior researcher as the "master" along with two students each of whom will present his/her research for 10-15 minutes, after which the master will provide wise and constructive comments, with audience participation encouraged in an informal session intended to give students access to senior expertise and to get good tips for their research. Another new event at this year's meeting with be the "BCI Hackathon" organized and sponsored by G.Tec Medical Engineering GmbH, during which participants will work in teams on a number of BCI applications and will then present their work to the hackathon community. NSF funding will be used to support student travel, registration, and student-only event costs. Student participation in previous IBCI meetings has been very fruitful; a large number of those students have now graduated and are prominent researchers in the BCI field. The organizers are actively recruiting student attendees from traditionally underrepresented groups. More information about the conference may be found online at http://bcisociety.org/meetings/bci-2018-welcome/. Because of the growth in the field of BCI research, 300 or more participants are expected to attend this meeting, including investigators from at least 100 BCI research groups. All attendees commit to the entire meeting, from the opening reception and dinner on the evening of Monday, May 21 through the final summary discussion at breakfast the morning of Friday, May 25. A main objective of the conference is to give students a significant educational and professional experience in the BCI field, and to provide opportunities for them to gain depth in their specific interest areas. The conference will begin with a specialized student colloquium on the afternoon before the full conference starts, which will provide lectures from prominent experts in the BCI field. This will give the students a solid foundation for understanding the rest of the conference. There will also be a student poster session and prizes for the best student research projects, as well as giving students access to research leaders for informal question-and-answer sessions at the end of each day. The students will participate fully in the main conference as well. Exposure to prominent researchers in the BCI field will allow students to receive invaluable feedback on their work, and to make connections that may result in new research directions; it will also provide students with access to potential mentors, committee members, and experts to review their future work. A full and detailed schedule of planned conference sessions and events, along with any updates, can be found on the conference website. With all participants housed on site and all meals for all attendees taken together on site, there will be ample opportunity for informal discussions. This creates a unique opportunity for students and trainees to mingle with and learn from established researchers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.