Community
NeurotechX and its student club (found one if the campus lacks it), BMES and IEEE EMBS, the BCI Society, the OpenBCI forum, Neuromatch's network, BioUtah. Where the people are, and why showing up works.
On this pageAn evening a month
Almost everything good that happened to people in this field happened because they were in a room, or a channel, with the right people, and asked a question. Here are the rooms.
NeurotechX
The global neurotechnology community: a Slack with thousands of members, local chapters in many cities, and a student club program that runs hackathons, sends speakers, and connects clubs to companies. If the University of Utah has a chapter, join it the first week. If it does not, founding one is a first-year-sized project: three friends, a faculty sponsor, the NeurotechX student club application, and a first meeting where you demonstrate alpha tug-of-war. The club then becomes your venue for the Phase 3 play projects, your team for the hackathons, and the reason companies know your name. Clubs that run one hackathon a year with a real sponsor produce internships.
BMES and IEEE EMBS
The Biomedical Engineering Society and the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. BMES student membership is 10 a year on top of the $32 IEEE student membership. Both give you the conferences at student rates (BMES in October has a large undergraduate poster session; EMBC in July has peer-reviewed short papers), the job boards, and the student chapters on campus, which run the industry visits. Join both in year one; present at one by year three.
The BCI Society
The field’s own professional society, small enough that a student can talk to anyone at its biennial meeting. Student membership is 115 for two, which is the most expensive of the three and the one to join in the year you have an abstract; the meeting’s abstract deadline is on the calendar. This is where the people whose papers you reproduced in Phase 3 are.
The OpenBCI forum and GOSH
The OpenBCIOpenBCI The open-source EEG hardware company whose Cyton (ADS1299) and Ganglion boards are the default hobby and research-lite amplifiers. Related: ADS1299ADS1299 Texas Instruments' 8-channel, 24-bit biopotential front-end chip used in OpenBCI and many research amplifiers. , BrainFlowBrainFlow A library that talks to OpenBCI and most consumer EEG headsets with one API, in Python and other languages. . Glossary entry forum is where hobbyist and research-lite EEGElectroencephalography (EEG) Recording the brain's electrical activity from electrodes on the scalp, a few tens of microvolts of blurred, summed cortical activity. Related: Electrocorticography (ECoG)Electrocorticography (ECoG) Recording from electrodes placed on the surface of the brain under the skull, usually during epilepsy surgery evaluation; cleaner and sharper than EEG. , Magnetoencephalography (MEG)Magnetoencephalography (MEG) Recording the tiny magnetic fields produced by cortical currents with superconducting sensors in a shielded room; less blurred by the skull than EEG, and far more expensive. , Volume conductionVolume conduction The spreading of currents from a source through the conductive tissues of the head, which is why one source shows up on many electrodes and why scalp EEG is blurry. , Microvolt (µV)Microvolt (µV) One millionth of a volt. Scalp EEG is tens of microvolts; a AA battery is 1.5 million of them. . Glossary entry problems get solved in public; searching it answers most Phase 1 and 2 questions, and asking a well-formed question there (with a plot and your setup) gets thoughtful help. The Gathering for Open Science Hardware is the broader open-instrument community, useful once you are building rigs for labs.
Neuromatch
Your pod and your teaching assistant from Neuromatch AcademyNeuromatch Academy An online, three-week summer school in computational neuroscience with a large alumni network, on a country-scaled tuition. Glossary entry are a network; keep the group chat alive. The broader Neuromatch community runs conferences and matching events.
BioUtah
The state’s life sciences association. Its events (the annual summit, the regular networking nights, the regulatory workshops) are open, and a first-year student attending is rare enough to be remembered. Go with a one-sentence description of what you have built and ask three people what they work on. Its member directory is the list of every device company in Utah.
Online
r/neuralengineering and r/BCIBrain-computer interface (BCI) A system that turns measured brain activity into control of something outside the body, from a cursor to a wheelchair to a speech synthesizer. Related: DecoderDecoder The algorithm that maps neural signals to intended actions, such as a classifier or a Kalman filter. , Closed loopClosed loop A system in which the output feeds back to influence the input, such as a user adjusting their brain activity while watching the cursor it controls. . Glossary entry for news and questions; the Neurotech Reports newsletter for industry; the arXiv and bioRxiv feeds for preprints in the relevant categories; and a few researchers and engineers worth following on whatever platform they post to. Keep it to an hour a week; the bench is the point.
How to show up
Ask one question at every talk. Introduce yourself to three people at every event with a specific sentence about what you have built. Follow up the next day with one line and a link to a build log. Offer to help with something (running the club’s hackathon registration, taking notes at the meeting). The people who become known in a field are the ones who were reliably useful in rooms, not the ones who were impressive once.
- Week one: join or found the NeurotechX club. Join BMES and IEEE EMBS as a student.
- Month one: attend one BioUtah event. Three introductions.
- Year one: demonstrate a Phase 3 play project at a club meeting.
- Year two: run or help run a hackathon. Join the BCIBrain-computer interface (BCI) A system that turns measured brain activity into control of something outside the body, from a cursor to a wheelchair to a speech synthesizer. Related: DecoderDecoder The algorithm that maps neural signals to intended actions, such as a classifier or a Kalman filter. , Closed loopClosed loop A system in which the output feeds back to influence the input, such as a user adjusting their brain activity while watching the cursor it controls. . Glossary entry Society.
- Year three: present a poster at BMES or the BCIBrain-computer interface (BCI) A system that turns measured brain activity into control of something outside the body, from a cursor to a wheelchair to a speech synthesizer. Related: DecoderDecoder The algorithm that maps neural signals to intended actions, such as a classifier or a Kalman filter. , Closed loopClosed loop A system in which the output feeds back to influence the input, such as a user adjusting their brain activity while watching the cursor it controls. . Glossary entry Society meeting.