Backyard Brains 2021 AI Fellowship

Call for HS Teachers and Undergraduates in Biology, Engineering and the Arts:

Calling all AI and neuroscience nerds (AND nerd wannabes): We are back! 

After taking a hiatus due to a global pandemic, we are proud to announce that we are returning with a very special guest star: TinyML! Tiny Machine Learning (TinyML) is a deep learning toolkit made for tinkers, educators and for those who want to know how machine learning really works… and we are excited about what it could mean to neuroscience educators!

For the first time ever, we are inviting K12 teachers to be a part of our summer program!  Learn how to integrate Machine Learning into your project-based lessons and help provide feedback on our teaching tools and project curricula! 

This summer, our fellowship program will focus on developing creative, wearable, and fun human-machine interfaces that can react with your brain waves, muscle, heart and eye movements using Deep Learning. You will learn the basics of neuroscience, computational thinking, machine learning, electronics, and will go from start to finish on developing your very own project. You will get support from our in house scientists and experts through every stage of your project.

About the 2021 Fellowship Program

Our AI Fellowship program will be designed around 2 cohorts.  The first are undergraduates with a background in Neuroscience, Art, Electrical, Mechanical or Computer Engineering, where they learn how to develop their own innovations, conduct fun experiments around computational neuroscience.  We are also recruiting High School teachers interested in learning about AI and how to teach hands-on AI lesson plans in their classroom. Teachers will participate remotely from around the country (1hr / week), and will help guide our projects for optimal use in the classroom. 

This fellowship is focused on developing computational skills. To do so, you will learn how to read and write peer-reviewed papers, discuss and plan around ethical concerns of using AI, learn how to develop a project and collect data, how to analyze and test results, how to make your own scientific poster and present your work to the academic communities, and finally how to speak to the public about your work. This program is unique: instead of working on a small part of the bigger project…  all fellow projects are yours alone!  We will support and guide you through, but you will experience everything from inception to publication… much like the life of a graduate researcher.  No prior research experience is necessary or required!

Teachers Gets a $1,000 Award in BYB Research Kits from Society for Science & the Public

Distance learning just got a lot easier for the 7th grade students of Abington Avenue School (Newark, NJ)! Their teacher Khalil Gordon has recently won $1,000 in Neuron SpikerBox Bundles. More precisely, they will get 13 of BYB research kits that they can use for project-based science learning from the comfort of their PJs!

The funding is part of Society for Science & the Public’s STEM Research Grants totaling $100,000, awarded to 100 middle and high school teachers from all across the U.S. They put special emphasis on schools in underserved and underrepresented communities.

This year, the program was geared toward distance learning, striving to provide teachers with resources and tools that facilitate hands-on science labs that students can do at home. As we’ve already written, a Harvard study has shown how well our bioamplifiers perform in student dorms, living rooms, bedrooms, or just about anywhere.

Neuron SpikerBox and other standards-aligned Remote Labs lie at the intersection of various nerdy disciplines such as biology, electrophysiology, computer science. They are already in use in hundreds of U.S. schools, colleges and other institutions – from elementary to higher education. The tweets speak for themselves!

Apply Now for Brain Awareness Week Outreach Grants – Cerebrate the Brain!

Are you a member of an organization or institution committed to celebrating the wonders of the brain and bringing them from academic heights down to your local community?

If yes, now is the time to apply for Brain Awareness Week (BAW) Outreach Grants for US and Canada! Grantees will be awarded up to $1,500 that they can use to organize events and spread the love for Citizen Neuroscience to kids, adults, budding scientists, and just about any curious soul.

Who’s Eligible for These Grants?

Any or all partners of the Dana Foundation are eligible to apply for these funds. Partnership is free but you will need to cover the cost of organizing the event. All the more reason to try and get the award to cut down on your costs!

Take a look at the list below and see if you fit any of these types of organizations: