Committee and Special Interest Group activities at the 2023 OHBM Annual Meeting

Written By OHBM SIGs and Committees

By OHBM's many committees and Special Interest Groups

Community-led events at #OHBM2023

The 2023 OHBM Annual Meeting is fast approaching! In addition to the fantastic scientific content organized by the Program Committee, many other committees and special interest groups (SIGs) host their own programs. At last year’s Annual Meeting in Glasgow, committees and SIGs hosted events on inclusivity, mentorship, art, and much more.

Read on to learn about upcoming committee and SIG events at OHBM 2023!

And don't forget to check out our latest Neuroscience podcast episode, where Peter Bandettini and Alfie Wearn talk about these events! You can find it at your favorite podcast service here and on YouTube here.

Brain-Art SIG

By: Xinhui Li, Giulia Baracchini

This year we will be holding the BrainArt Exhibition, BrainArt Competition, and activities for children under the theme “The Multifaceted Brain: Adaptation and Diversity”.

BrainArt Exhibition. The BrainArt exhibition will be held at the Poster and Exhibit Hall (Room 220 ABC) during the OHBM annual meeting and highlight 16 artworks including still images, videos and sculptures. These artworks will explore the topics about adaptation and diversity across cultures, diversity of human sexuality as well as neurodiversity. Check out our website to learn more about our special theme and a list of featured artists: https://ohbm-brainart.github.io/exhibit.html 

BrainArt Competition. The BrainArt competition is now open to the public! We accept submissions across five categories including 1) the multifaceted brain: adaptation and diversity, 2) pictures to prose, 3) still images, 4) videos and animations, and 5) beautiful mistakes. We will announce the public vote and judges vote winners for each category at the meeting. Please consider submitting your art to the competition: https://ohbm-brainart.github.io/competition.html 

BrainArt for the scientists of the future. On Sunday July 23 from 10:30am to 11:30am in the Poster and Exhibit Hall, we will also be offering activities for children, in multiple languages, around neuroimaging and the topic of our exhibition. Children will have the opportunity to learn about the brain in creative and playful ways. Spots are limited, so make sure to register here! 

If you would like to keep up with us more regularly, you can: 

Finally, we are always happy to connect and collaborate. If you’d like to reach out to us, we’ll be glad to hear from you at ohbm.brainart@gmail.com. 

Diversity and Inclusivity Committee (DIC)

By:  Eduardo Garza-Villarreal

The 5th annual DIC Symposium titled “Using technology to enhance diversity and inclusivity in neuroscience and neuroimaging” will include a diverse panel of speakers: Tilak Ratnanather, Jasmine Kwasa, Arnelle Etienne, and Parisa Zakavi.

The 4th edition of the Kids Live Review features talks dedicated to children speaking Bengali, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese Mandarin Simplified, Chinese Mandarin Traditional (Taiwan), Marathi, Portuguese, and Spanish. Check out the website for more info: https://ohbm-dic.github.io/kidsreview/2023/

There will be a Diversity & Inclusivity Roundtable titled “Advancing multiple dimensions of diversity at OHBM” organized by Rosanna Olsen, Fernando Barrios, Fernanda Hansen Pacheco de Moraes, Hyang Woon Lee, Kangjoo Lee, Pradeep Raamana, Lucina Uddin, and Maryam Ziaei, where we wish to gain insights into OHBM members’ experiences and needs at the OHBM annual meeting in terms of diversity.

Education Committee

By: Jeanette Mumford

We had some amazing options to choose from for this year’s Educational Courses!  We’ve chosen a  mix of newer courses and popular favorites that have evolved a bit each year.  So many fantastic speakers!  Want to move beyond blobology, improve your QC practices, learn about artificial neural networks, learn whether physiological signal is your friend or foe, peek into some white matter, or learn about whole-brain connectomes?  Check out the full day courses.  Half day courses cover reproducible neuroimaging, meta analysis, and neuroanatomy, and if you’re excited about excitation and inhibition, we’ve got you covered.  

Remember, you can go to multiple courses throughout the day.  Get more of the details here: https://www.humanbrainmapping.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=4204

Open Science (OS-) SIG

By: Johanna Bayer

Hey there, Open Science enthusiasts! The Open Science SIG team is thrilled to invite you to two exciting events happening this July: Brainhack and the Open Science Room. Get ready for an immersive online and onsite experience in beautiful Montreal!

First up, from July 19th to 21st, brace yourself for the 8th edition of Brainhack, a well-known neuroimaging and neuroscience hackathon. This event brings together brilliant minds from around the globe to collaborate on cutting-edge projects. Witness the incredible impact of Brainhack, showcased in the "Proceeding of the OHBM Brainhack 2021" article, featuring groundbreaking projects like automated MRI data quality control and an interactive virtual reality platform. We're also committed to fostering diversity, equity, and inclusiveness, with activities and resources in place to support participants from developing countries and individuals with disabilities. While the in-person event is fully booked, the simultaneous virtual event is available to everyone. Don't miss out on this exciting opportunity!

In parallel with OHBM 2023, we present the Open Science Room (OSR). This year's OSR will delve into new and emerging topics, open science concerns, and the bigger picture. Come engage in panel discussions, table talks, and emergent sessions, covering open publishing, code standardization, open data governance, the intersection of neuroscience and telehealth, and the implications of large open data repositories. Community input is vital, so we encourage you to contribute topic suggestions and self-nominate as speakers. As a bonus, the Open Science SIG presents a symposium on "Open Science - sustainability through success stories," sharing inspiring tales of how open science practices have positively impacted careers and the neuroscience community. The OSR is a welcoming and inclusive space for collaboration and connection.

To discover more about these thrilling events, visit our OSSIG website. We're also seeking volunteers and future team members, so don't hesitate to get in touch if you'd like to be a part of the action!

Mark your calendars and get ready for an unforgettable experience. We can't wait to see you there!

Best regards,
The Open Science SIG team

Student-Postdoc (SP-) SIG

By: Lei Zhang

The SP SIG will be maintaining many anticipated traditional events whilst initiating exciting new activities! 

Monday Night Social. Since OHBM 2010 in Barcelona, the Monday Night Social has gathered the OHBM community for a fun and light-hearted social over food and drinks to bring out the human nature of this scientific community. It can only be more exciting in Montreal (July 24, 2023)!

Lunch with Mentors. As a part of the SP-SIG’s initiatives, the “Lunch with Mentors” event each year continues to be oversubscribed and in large demand indicating the importance of this event to OHBM trainees. This year on July 23, 2023, OHBM trainees will again have extensive opportunities to engage in informal conversations on research skills and career development with both new and established PIs, as well as industry experts. The aim of the event is to inspire and motivate the next generation of OHBM researchers, giving them an opportunity to learn from the experiences of the invited mentors. 

#NewPI roundtable (new this year!). The transition from junior researcher to independent scientist is a critical and often neglected issue. This roundtable on July 24, 2023, seeks to equip early career researchers with the knowledge, skills, and strategies needed to make the transition to independence in academia and empower them to confidently pursue their scientific goals. All are invited!

If you would like to keep up with us more regularly, you can: 

Sustainability and Environment Action (SEA-) SIG 

By: Winson Yang

This year, the SEA-SIG will be holding their third symposium, entitled “Actionable neuroimaging-focused steps we can take to curb climate change.” Speakers will be presenting empirical work that can help us take practical steps towards reducing the effects that climate change will have on us in the future. We will discuss how we can make fMRI preprocessing pipelines less resource-intensive, lessons from psychological research on the decisions people make that can undermine sustainability goals, and much more! The symposium will be held in Room 513 on Sunday, July 23, from 2:15–3:30pm.

Additionally, come and join us in the sunshine at the SEA-SIG picnic on Tuesday the 25th between 12–1 pm. This will be a great opportunity to chat with other OHBM members interested in sustainability whilst enjoying a sandwich or two. The picnic will be held in the vicinity of the conference center. The precise location will be confirmed soon—stay tuned! 

You can also find more information about our OHBM2023 events on our website: https://ohbm-environment.org/ohbm-2023/

We look forward to seeing you there!

Women in OHBM SIG

By: Jean Chen

Our SIG's first annual meeting is on Monday evening at 5:15pm in 512 A-D. All women faculty and leaders that want to support women faculty are welcome to attend. Coffee and cookies will be served. 

[Editor’s note: For more details on OHBM’s newest SIG, check out our recent blog post introducing the Women in OHBM SIG.]

Communications Committee (ComCom)

By: Elizabeth DuPre

As the annual meeting approaches, we’re looking forward to connecting and communicating our science in-person once again! As Helen Longino argued, science is social knowledge; OHBM annual meeting is thus an important venue for driving the field forward.

To help launch the conversation, ComCom is leading a series of initiatives:

Keynote Interview Series In the lead up to the annual meeting, we are continuing our tradition of sharing interviews with each of this year’s keynote presenters on the blog; for example, you can find our interview with last year’s speaker Janaina Mourao-Miranda here. For the first time, several of these will also be jointly released as special podcast mini-episodes! 

Live Podcast Event While you may primarily know ComCom for our behind-the-scenes work (like delivering this blog post!), we hope to see many members in-person for our live podcast episode recording! Continuing last year’s inaugural event, we will be hosting a discussion during the annual meeting on individual difference research in human brain mapping. Our current podcast team lead, Alfie Wearn, will lead what promises to be an exciting discussion, so stop by Room 513 on Monday, July 24, from 12:30 pm—2:00 pm to join the conversation!

For the first time this year, we will also be co-sponsoring a Public Lecture series just before the annual conference ! Featuring talks from six Montreal-based OHBM members, these public lectures are intended to engage the local community—in each of Montreal’s two official languages, English and French—and share our excitement for human brain mapping with the general public. You can find more information on the English event here and the French event here. 

From all the committees and SIGs listed here: We wish all our members a great experience at the 2023 annual meeting.

OHBM SIGs and Committees
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