Training program in computational approaches to brain and behavior

PROGRAM SUMMARY The Training Program in Computational Neuroscience (TPCN) will support integrated undergraduate and graduate training in computational neuroscience at New York University. The program will be hosted by the Center for Neural Science (CNS) and the Cognition and Perception (C&P) program in the Department of

Psychology, reflecting the dual roles of brain and behavior. The TPCN program faculty consist of 24 highly productive PIs. The TPCN will be a continuation of the NIH-funded program run successfully at NYU from 2016 to 2021, which trained 24 undergraduate and 12 predoctoral students and built an infrastructure of community

activities. The TPCN fits well with NYU’s strengths: a) NYU is one of a few universities with a critical mass of computational neuroscientists, and NYU has had a Sloan-Swartz Center for Theoretical Neuroscience since 1994 b) In the past year alone, the two participating departments have hired four primarily

computational/theoretical faculty; c) CNS established an undergraduate major in neuroscience as early as 1992; d) program faculty have a strong track record of wide-ranging collaborations as well as of co-mentoring predoctoral students. Each trainee in the TPCN will complete a year of coursework, laboratory research, and TPCN-specific

professional development activities, which include skill tutorials, orientation on the next career stage, workshopping each other’s writings and presentations, faculty openly discussing the backstories of their careers (“Growing up in Science”), predoctoral trainees mentoring undergraduate trainees, and didactic journal

clubs preceding computational neuroscience seminars by external speakers. Together, these activities form a comprehensive preparation for an academic career in computational neuroscience. A major goal of the TPCN will be to increase access to and diversity in computational neuroscience especially at the undergraduate level. This requires making hidden curriculum explicit and compensating for

students’ pre-college differences in opportunity. We will realize this through a variety of measures, including a) holding a math boot camp preceding application to TPCN; b) providing earlier exposure to research; c) introducing undergraduate lab rotations; d) reducing the default duration of a traineeship from 2 to 1-years,

thus offering broader access.