Week 25 update
NeuroML related
NeuroML is a standard and software ecosystem for biophysically detailed neuronal modelling.
We made new releases of jNeuroML and pyNeuroML. The new releases allow users to keep their morphology in separate files and "include" these in cell files. The use case here is that when investigating neuronal biophysics, it would be useful to not have to repeat the morphology each time the cell is used.
We also updated our documentation to note this new feature.
Google Summer of Code
Aditya and Ioannis have both completed their first tasks and their pull requests are ready for review. I'll try and review them next week. In the meantime, they've got new tasks for next week.
Model conversion
I'm still working on the converting the two remaining Calcium channels in Zang et al. They're slightly trickier to convert because of the formalism they follow, but I should get there with another few days of work.
UCL
The UCL Neuroscience symposium was on Thursday. The talks and posters were great and very informative, e.g.:
- on visual processing (using really cool virtual reality experiments)
- on the role of sleep on synapses numbers
- Dementia with particular focus on Alzheimer's disease and the role of the tau protein
We'd also had a really interesting talk on the GLP-1 receptor, which is involved in the secretion of insulin for maintenance of blood sugar levels, at our Neuroscience, Pharmacology, and Physiology (NPP) departmental seminar.
I'm also involved with the mentoring programme that the Division of Biosciences runs for PhD students. We had discussed this at the divisional meeting last week, and now we have a few tasks to carry out to improve the programme's reach to more students.
OCNS
The annual conference of the Organization for Computational Neurosciences will happen in July in Natal, Brazil, this year.
I'm organising the career development workshop at the annual conference of the Organization for Computational Neuroscience as part of my Board member responsibilities. This year, we're hosting a "beyond academia" session where we'll have folks who have worked or are currently working in industry after their doctorates and initial academic positions will speak about their experiences. The goal is to discuss careers that academics can take up outside of the traditional academic research domain. With help from a number of Board members and others at the lab at UCL, I had a list of people to reach out to. We now have a panel of four, so we're on track.
The programme for the conference is also now online on Sched, and registration is still open.
I also had a quick meeting with the OCNS EDI chair, Eirini Mavristaki, about the mentoring programme that the OCNS is trying to set up for its members. Eirini has already got most of it ready, and I'll help with the remaining bits to try and launch it at the conference or soon after.
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