Interdisciplinary Training in Computational Neuroscience

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Project Summary Rationale: To understand the many disorders of the brain it is necessary to grapple with its complexity. Increasingly large and complicated data sets are being collected, but the tools for analyzing and modeling the data are not yet available. More researchers trained in computational neuroscience are desperately needed. This project supports interdisciplinary graduate training programs in computational neuroscience (TPCN) at both Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt), and a summer school in computational neuroscience for undergraduates, which are available to students coming from colleges and universities throughout the United States. Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a world leader and innovator in quantitative fields such as machine learning, computer science, and artificial intelligence, and recently, neuroscience has emerged as a field for strategic growth at the university. The University of Pittsburgh is renowned for the strength of its clinical and biomedical research programs. The TPCN is set within a highly collegial, cross-disciplinary environment of our Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC), which is operated jointly by CMU and Pitt. The CNBC was established in 1994 to foster interdisciplinary research on the neural mechanisms of brain function, and now comprises 162 faculty having appointments in 32 departments. Goals: The goals of the TPCN are to: 1) Support computational training of PhD students across the neurosciences, 2) Broaden accessibility for students historically underrepresented in STEM by augmenting an existing MS-to-PhD training program that prepares them for advanced graduate training in computational neuroscience, 3) Expand computational training of undergraduate students through a formal academic minor in computational neuroscience, 4) Support an undergraduate summer program that combines a two-week “boot-camp” overview of computational neuroscience with an 8-week research experience, 5) Create online materials that not only serve our own students but are publicly available on the web, and 6) Enhance our recruitment through relationships we have developed with minority-serving institutions.