The University of Florida recently hosted a successful international conference on Real-time Functional Imaging and Neurofeedback (rtFIN 2015) at the UF Hilton Hotel and Conference Center.
The conference was attended by about 180 registered participants and several non-registered attendees, from all over the world, including, the US, Chile, Brazil, Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Italy, UK, Norway, Russia, Israel, South Korea and Japan. It was truly an international conference!
The 3-day event included diverse activities including, two 3-hour technical workshops of Near Infrared Spectroscopy and EEG Brain-Computer Interfaces, an extensive tour of the McKnight Brain Institute (MBI) facilities, 6 keynote speeches, 15 oral presentations, ~80 posters, industrial exhibits, 2-hour long panel discussion on the challenges and future of the field, not to forget the fun gathering at the SWAMP restaurant and the cocktail reception at the Florida Museum of Natural History. The conference awarded 15 international and domestic student travel awards. The best poster and the best oral presentation awards were chosen based on balloting votes from all the attendees.
The events were captured in hundreds of photos, now organized in 6 albums made available through this link. (Feel free to leave your comments below your favorite photos and make them come alive!)
The conference included several keynote speakers who delivered inspiring talks. Thank you to Dr. Eberhard Fetz (University of Washington, Seattle), Dr. Mitsuo Kawato (ATR, Japan), Dr. Jeff Fitzsimmons (UF) and Dr. Christopher deCharms (Omneuron, USA) for your participation.
There were also several generous sponsors who helped make the conference a success. These include the McKnight Brain Institute, The J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering (UF), University of Texas (Austin), ROHM Semiconductors, Toshiba Medical Systems, Dr. Jeff Fitzsimmons, NIRx, Cortech, Invivo and others.
I’m grateful to Dr. Cammy Abernathy (Dean, College of Engineering, UF), Dr. Christine Schmidt (Chair, BME, UF), and Dr. Tetsuo Ashizawa (Executive Director, MBI Gainesville) for their kind presence and delivering welcome addresses on different occasions of the conference. Many thanks to Dr. Joanna Long (Director, CTSI Human Imaging Core, MBI) and her team for organizing a wonderful tour of the MBI facilities.
This conference would not have been possible without the coordinated work of many of my international colleagues: Dr. James Sulzer (UT Austin), Dr. Maria Laura Blefari (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne), Dr. Sven Haller (Uni of Geneva, Switzerland), Dr. Nikolaus Weiskopf (Uni College London), Dr. Frank Scharnowski (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne), Luke Stoeckel (NIH) and Jarrod Lewis-Peacock (UT, Austin). Many thanks to Andrea Wherry from the conference department for helping with all the nitty-gritty.
For those who attended the conference, please send feedback and suggestions to ranganatha.sitaram@bme.ufl.edu.
Thank you once again, and see you in 2017 (please await announcement of the venue)!