OUR OUTREACH
OUR EDUCATION PROGRAMMES
Outreach is a core activity for the Conte Center and one we take very seriously. The Center runs several Educational Outreach programs and has developed an interactive Public Outreach program. Please see below for further details on each of these.
EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH
Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE)
Our member Institutes and Universities have several internationally renowned programs/departments in Psychology and Neuroscience the SURE can draw from. Participating students will be provided summer research support and travel costs to present findings of their research in the year following their participation. Working with Drs. Joshua Brumberg and Tony Ro, we have formed a collaboration with CUNY that enables us to draw undergraduate participants from Queens College (the seat of the CUNY undergraduate Neuroscience Major), Hunter College and City College for the SURE program. Final selection of summer students will be made by the steering committee, and opportunities will be offered to students at all participating institutions.
Diversity and Under-Represented Minority Outreach
Dr. Brumberg is also Dean of the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, which draws from all the colleges in the system. Queens is a “diversity” institution, while Hunter and City College are underrepresented minority (URM) serving institutions. We offer five “Doctoral Student Conference Fellowships” per year to be awarded to qualified graduate students from the CUNY graduate program. For continuing trainees, fellowships will be renewable each year, pending the PhD advisor’s approval.
Women-in-Science Symposium
Inspired by an ongoing Women-in-Science initiative, in which Project leader Sabine Kastner participates at Princeton, this is an annual one-day Women-in-Science Symposium. Speakers are chosen by the Internal Advisory Committee. The Symposium rotates between participating Universities.
Conte Center Seminar Series
This seminar series takes place at Columbia and is web-telecast to the other institutions within the Center with one external speaker scheduled each month. Speakers are chosen by the Steering Committee, based on their relevance to the Center’s central themes of Neuronal Dynamics and Active Sensing. We aim to represent complementary and competing viewpoints.
Conte Center Web Journal Club on Brain Rhythms
This takes place every Monday at 4-5 pm EST (NKI, Columbia, BU and Princeton), 3-4pm CST (Wash U.) and 2-3 pm PST (Berkeley) and is led by Peter Lakatos. He and Charles Schroeder have been running a similar club for several years at NKI and Columbia in parallel. Journal club participants choose and present papers for critique at a rate of one or sometimes two per week.
Frontiers for Young Minds
Frontiers for Young Minds, (http://kids.frontiersin.org/) is a new Journal with Conte Center Project Leaders Knight and Kastner serving as Editor-in-Chief and Neuroscience Editors, respectively. Frontiers for Young Minds is a web-based science journal that involves young people in the review of scientific articles with the help of scientists who act as mentors. It is designed to engage young people by giving them a role in the process of science editing and communication. Sara Szczepanski, a member of the Knight Lab, serves as the Center’s liaison to the Journal.