Hello world! We are back after a long absence with more stories to share about our student life in the MSNE program. At this point it seems appropriate to start off by introducing ourselves, the 4th batch of MSNE students. Our cohort, just like the previous ones, comes from all around the globe: be it Brazil and South Korea, India and Italy, the US and Germany, and many, many more. What brings us together in Munich is a shared goal of defining new frontiers in neuroscience through engineering training or vice versa - using an understanding of the brain to advance in complex engineering problems.

Germany’s most awaited football tournament, the Champions’ League Elite Cup, was held on Saturday 22ndof June 2019 in Regensburg. Once again, the MSNE football team, the Neuruns, picked up the call of duty. Despite terrible weather forecasts, which prognosed heavy storms throughout the day, the Neuruns decided to go at the last moment (literally), and so they boarded the train towards glory, with an inherited objective: score a goal and break the curse!

EEG technology is on it’s way out of the lab into real world settings. Therefore, mBrain Train has organized their first Workshop on mobile EEG in the beautiful capital of Serbia to bring together experts from the community. Two MSNE students were invited (Mert Keser and Florian Schönleitner) and took this chance not only to listen to inspiring talks but also to discuss all the various challenges that arise when moving BCI applications from well defined lab environments to uncontrollable daily life situations.

The MSNE Neuruns teams participated in the TUM Campus Run 2019, in both its 5,5 and 11 km flavors. This time the scorching sun made the running conditions particularly harsh, but nonetheless it was great fun. Thanks a lot to the organization team of this event, which gets better every year! Francisco Zurita

The third MSNE retreat started on 30th of May - in a very picturesque village called Brixlegg in Tyrol, Austria - and of course it couldn’t start without adventures from the beginning. We’ll try to share with you the amazing neuro-weekend we spent together. First day First thing we remember is how Aleks, Nogay, Tanya and our awesome organizers (Mel, Fulvia and Adrià) were trying to take all the cookies and other less important things from Adrià’s place - and almost missed the bus since the driver was expecting to be leaving earlier.

Alexander Knorr spent two semesters with the first and the second batch and one semester with the third batch. He had the role of a tutor on Computational Neuroscience and Statistics and Probability, was always present on the lectures and not only that! He joined the TUM Campus run under the group name “Neuruns” together with some students and some other faculty associates. When Prof. Glasauer left LMU last semester, Alex continued to support Prof.

As a part of our Master’s program, MSNE students explore labs outside of our programs in 6 to 8 week research internships. In this and a following series of posts, we collected stories of the experiences we made during our internships. In the second post, Lucas and Jonas share their impressions from their internships in Manchester and Atlanta. Lucas: University of Manchester, UK In the 2018 spring break, from February to April, I was part of the APT Advanced Processor Technologies Research Group at the University of Manchester.

This year’s Cosyne (Computational and Systems’s neuroscience) was in the beautiful city of Lisbon, Portugal. It featured thought-provoking talks by Ken Harris, Eric-Shea-Brown and others. After the introduction of powerful tools based on recurrent neural networks in the last years, a common theme seemed to have been to build interpretable models of neural dynamics to use the powerful tools to ask scientific hypotheses. The workshops were in a way to fancy hotel in the seaside town of Cascais and provided a good ground for more detailed scientific discourse of the whole community.

At the beginning when we (as a second batch of MSNE) started this program, Steffen shared one event with us. It was about 4 lectures that were 15 minutes each and mostly related to Neuroscience. Around 10 fresh minds, eager for new knowledge, especially if related to neuroscience, went to the event. It left me a very good impression and after this event, the events from 15x4 Munich were visited regularly by students from our program.

The Neuroengineering Matinee took place the morning of the 16th of January at the Vorhoelzer Forum. Led by Professor Jakob Macke, two guest talks were held: Patrick van der Smagt, Volkswagen: Latent Optimal Control Srinivas Turaga, HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus: Connecting the Structure and Function of Neural Circuits Afterwards, MSNE students held a presentation and poster session, introducing the audience to the research projects carried out during the program:

As a part of our Master’s program, MSNE students explore labs outside of our programs in 6 to 8 week research internships. In this and a following series of posts, we collected stories of the experiences we made during our internships. In our first post, Pranshul, Annika and Vanessa share their impressions from interning in California, Tübingen and Boston. Pranshul: UC Davis with Dr. Clifford Saron I joined Dr. Clifford Saron’s lab at the University of California, Davis.

The Bernstein Conference for Computational Neuroscience took place at the end of September in Berlin. A group of students from MSNE attended the conference and Vanessa and Mohammad presented a poster from their research projects. There were a lot of wonderful talks and posters, including a talk from Dr. James DiCarlo from MIT who discussed “Reverse engineering human visual intelligence” that was particularly exciting, and a talk from Tatjana Tchumatchenko from the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research (Frankfurt, Germany) on “How to understand neural network dynamics via intracellular dynamics”.

Stefan Glasauer, one of MSNE’s most iconic Professors, will take some distance from the program at the end of this semester as he is starting a new research group at the TU Cottbus. Fortunately for future generations of MSNE students, Prof. Glasauer will still visit us in Munich from time to time to give his beloved lectures. We did not want to let him go without a proper farewell, so on Monday the 6th of August many of us students gathered with him in the Hofbräukeller Biergarten to have dinner together.

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In June, Nicolas and I made our way to Tübingen to attend the German-Israeli Conference on Clinical Neurotechnologies and Healthy Aging. The focus lay on brain stimulation which could even be tested during the coffee breaks (I prefer not to show the video of my involuntarily kicking legs here). When speaking of the ‘brain’ the retina is also meant (of course). On the last day the MedTech Startup School offered an Open Innovation Day where we discussed several aspects of founding a Neuro-Tech start-up.

Why a Journal Club? Science communication is an essential aspect of scientific research. It enables scientists and researchers to inform each other, as well as the public, about science progress and invoke scientific, political and ethical thinking. The general purpose of a journal club is to facilitate the review of research studies and to discuss implications of the study in practice. In general, a journal club helps with: Sharing knowledge of current research Facilitating the learning process Enhancing literature critique and appraisal skills Encouraging interaction and dialogue with other researchers Encouraging research utilization, and Promoting team building Neuroengineering Journal Club (NJC) is all about the above-mentioned objectives.

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This April, first and second year students as well as faculty members of the MSNE met at the Networking Workshop of TU Munich’s Center of Competence in Neuroengineering. Event agenda 14:00Introductory remarks by Prof. Gordon ChengChair for Cognitive Systems (TUM) 14:10-14:30Prof. Ilona Grunwald KadowNeuronal Circuits and Metabolism, School of Life Sciences Weihenstephan (TUM)“Asking the fly to reveal neural network principles underlying behavior” 14:30-14:50Prof. Markus PlonerHeisenberg Professor of Human Pain Research, Department of Neurology, School of Medicine (TUM)“Neuroengineering approaches to the understanding, diagnosis and therapy of pain”

From 9th to 16th March, MSNE students Auguste, Pranshul, Steffen and Nicolas attended the Interdisciplinary College (IK) in Günne. Since 1997, this annual spring school brings together students and researchers from the fields of computational neuroscience, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, robotics, cognitive sciences and philosophy. The overall topic of this year Me, Myself and I was approached from various different angles through the lenses of the different scientific disciplines. Among many other lectures, we enthusiastically attended the lecture series of MSNE faculty Prof.

While walking through the aisles on a train to Heidelberg, I finally stumble upon my reserved seat… Only to find it and its neighbors are surrounded by a family of 20. Rather than making a fuss - I go ahead and choose an unoccupied seat farther back, hoping to get some sleep in preparation for what I’m imagining will be a long three days. At the next stop, I’m roused awake by somebody asking in a distinct American accent “Is this seat available?

With the start of the semester, 23 new students joined the Master’s program in Neuroengineering at TU Munich. This Friday, the first and second year MSNE students met for a first get-together. Auguste Schulz

This september we visited the 13th Bernstein Conference organized by the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Göttingen (BCCN Göttingen) in Göttingen.

Some remarks about the homepage layout and how to contribute.

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After a semester of interesting theoretical lectures in neuroanatomy and neurophysiology we had the chance of gaining practical hands-on experience about the human brain in the Munich Brain Course. The Munich Brain Course is a yearly intensive course on neuroanatomy organized by the Institute of Anatomy of the Ludwig Maximilians University (LMU) - the non-technical university in Munich. The course started in the morning with a nice welcome buffet. Strengthened by the snacks and the coffee, we learned about the century-long history of neuroscience research in Munich and about the structure and organization of the course during an introductory talk and then had the pleasure to hear from Prof.

Some remarks about the homepage layout and how to contribute.