Carnegie Mellon Hosts Neurohackathon
BrainHub, a multi-disciplinary research organization at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), is hosting its first Neurohackathon May 24-25. The event
challenges computer science students to develop solutions for analyzing
neuroscience data.
Researchers from BrainHub have collected vast
amounts of data from MRI and electrophysiological recordings. "The
brain has billions of neurons and trillions of synapses, making it an
excellent source of big data," stated a news release from the
university. Teams participating in the Neurohackathon will each receive
a neuroscience dataset and work with resesarchers to develop new
methods of analyzing the data, according to information from the
university.
Neurohackathon projects include:
- Developing a supervised learning classifier to analyze human brain neuroanatomy from MRI images;
- Attempting
to establish a relationship between neural activity and mouse behavior
by analyzing fluorescent activity recorded while a mouse was running
and at rest;
- Analyzing data on epigenetic changes in the human
brain to identify any associations between those changes and various
diseases; and
- Attempting to identify types of brain cells by analyzing their spontaneous firing patterns.
Each
team will include at least one graduate student from CMU's School of Computer Science. Neurohackathon prizes include travel awards and a
semester of graduate tuition.
BrainHub's Neurohackathon is sponsored by Qualcomm, Google, Microsoft, Baidu, CMU's Provost’s Office, BrainHub and CMU's Department of Machine Learning.
About the Author
Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].