Connectionists: NeuroML announcements: upcoming HARMONY hackathon in London and Google Summer of Code projects

[Ankur Sinha]

Dear all,

Apologies for cross posts.

We would like to announce 2 upcoming initiatives related to the NeuroML
project: a hackathon in London at UCL where you can learn about the
model description language and get help converting your model to this
standardised format, and 3 Google Summer of Code projects where students
or postdocs can be paid for contributing to the NeuroML model
development infrastructure.

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The COMBINE organisation's HARMONY meeting is being held at University
College London from April 8-11 this year. Registration for HARMONY is free.

https://co.mbine.org/author/harmony-2024/

We (NeuroML editors and developers) will be running hands-on NeuroML
hackathons at HARMONY, with the general theme being to help researchers
learn more about NeuroML and to build new or convert existing models in
NeuroML. We are also keen to help simulator or other application
developers integrate NeuroML support (import/export) into their tools.

We invite you to register and attend the meeting to:

- learn more about how NeuroML supports all stages of the model life cycle
- learn how to create your model in NeuroML from scratch
- learn how to convert your existing model into NeuroML
- learn how the NeuroML APIs (in Python, Java, C++, Matlab) can help you
  integrate NeuroML support into your application

Please share this information with colleagues that may be undertaking
new modelling projects where NeuroML may be used.

For more information see
https://docs.neuroml.org/Events/202404-Harmony.html

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Google Summer of Code is an initiative to encourage contributions to
open source software projects. Generous stipends are provided for
successful applicants to work on these projects for a number of months
over the summer. The INCF has been a GSoC mentoring organisation for the
past number of years, and has helped link up students with mentors to
advance various projects in the wider neuroinformatics and computational
neuroscience areas.

This year we are offering 3 projects related to NeuroML:

- Open source, cross simulator, large scale network models in NeuroML and PyNN
  https://neurostars.org/t/gsoc-2024-project-idea-13-1-open-source-cross-simulator-large-scale-network-models-in-neuroml-and-pynn-175h-350h/28266/3

- Implementation of SWC to NeuroML converter in PyNeuroML
  https://neurostars.org/t/gsoc-2024-project-idea-13-2-implementation-of-swc-to-neuroml-converter-in-pyneuroml-175h-350h/28267

- Incorporate new features into an advanced, cross-platform 3D viewer for NeuroML cells and networks
  https://neurostars.org/t/gsoc-2024-project-idea-13-3-incorporate-new-features-into-an-advanced-cross-platform-3d-viewer-for-neuroml-cells-and-networks-175h-350h/28268

This opportunity is particularly relevant for Masters & PhD students
currently working in model development/analysis in computational
neuroscience. Many students are already reusing/converting/updating
existing models as part of their work, or developing tools to handle
neuronal model elements such as morphological reconstructions, and this
is a great opportunity to get paid by Google to do this!

- Closing date for student applications: 2nd April 2024
- Standard period of working on projects: May 27 - Aug/Sept 2024

See: https://www.incf.org/activities/gsoc for more information.

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More information on NeuroML can be found in our recent preprint
(https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.12.07.570537v1)
and in our up to date documentation: https://docs.neuroml.org

On behalf of the NeuroML community,
Ankur Sinha, Padraig Gleeson, and Angus Silver

-- 
Thanks,
Regards,
Ankur Sinha (He / Him / His) | https://ankursinha.in
Research Fellow at the Silver Lab, University College London | http://silverlab.org/
Free/Open source community volunteer at the NeuroFedora project | https://neuro.fedoraproject.org
Time zone: Europe/London