Connectionists: Grand Challenge on Neural Decoding at BioCAS 2024

[Prof. Arindam BASU]

Apologies for Cross posting
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Dear all

We are pleased to announce the Grand Challenge on “Neural Decoding for Motor Control of non-Human Primates” at IEEE BioCAS 2024.

About

The need to restore their ability to perform activities for daily living has motivated the development of a host of assistive technologies. The most promising among the reported ones is the intra-cortical Brain-Machine Interface (iBMI). iBMIs aim to substantially improve patients' lives affected by spinal cord injury or debilitating neurodegenerative disorders such as tetraplegia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis etc.

An important block in the signal processing chain is the intention decoder that converts the neural signal to a command for driving an actuator (e.g. wheelchair, cursor in screen etc.). While Kalman Filters have been the algorithm of choice historically, the recent improvements of deep neural networks (DNN) raise the question whether they can outperform traditional signal processing techniques. Moreover, integrating such decoders in the implant can provide an effective solution to data compression which is urgently needed to enable wireless iBMIs. However, the computational complexity of the decoder has to be reduced to fit within the power budget of an implant.  Recent advances in DNN techniques such as model compression, quantization and new networks like spiking neural networks may offer solutions in this direction.

This IEEE BioCAS Grand Challenge is geared in that direction and aims to push the boundary for neural decoder design toward next-generation BMI systems. We leverage the framework of Neurobench (https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.04640) developed for benchmarking neuromorphic systems to enable fair comparisons between different decoder designs.



Timeline

Start of Registration                                                                                       Friday, Apr 26, 2024

Start of Project Submission                                                                     Wednesday, May 1, 2024

End of Registration/ Regular Paper Submission                                           Friday, May 27, 2024

End of Project Submission                                                                              Friday, Aug 2, 2024

Author Notification Date                                                                               Friday, Aug 16, 2024

Final paper submission deadline                                                                      Friday, Sep 6, 2024

Conference Registration                                                                                   Friday, Oct 4, 2024



Participation

1.     The competition is open to individuals, colleges/universities, scientific research institutions, and enterprises. The maximum number of team members is 3.

2.     To ensure compliance with local regulations during the competition, all participants should comply with the export control laws of their country. In case of any negative impact on the competition due to violation of any export control laws, the team members reserve the right to disqualify the relevant contestants and take legal action.

3.     Participants shall express their interest to participate in this Grand Challenge by filling in the application form (https://forms.gle/XGu4Bo9qq2YEYWWe6 ). They have to further submit an abstract in the Conference paper submission website (https://2024.ieee-biocas.org/Call-for-Papers) choosing the track as “Grand Challenge”, by May 27, 2024.



Awards

Top performing teams will be invited to submit papers in a week after their notification on Aug 16. Do note that gaining one of the top places on the leaderboard does not necessarily mean the acceptance of your paper –the paper will still go through a peer review process and may be rejected. The winning entries may however present their work at the conference regardless of paper acceptance. They will also receive certificates.

For further details of datasets and evaluation metrics, please check the Biocas website: http://2024.ieee-biocas.org/

You may also email the organizers as listed below. We look forward to receiving your submissions!

Thanking you,

Organizers

Biyan Zhou, City University of Hong Kong



Pao-Sheng Vincent Sun, City University of Hong Kong



Jason Yik, Harvard University



Charlotte Frenkel, Delft University of Technology



Vijay Janapa Reddi, Harvard University



Arindam Basu, City University of Hong Kong



(Email: byzhou4-c at my.cityu.edu.hk<mailto:byzhou4-c at my.cityu.edu.hk>; vincesun-c at my.cityu.edu.hk<mailto:vincesun-c at my.cityu.edu.hk>; jyik at g.harvard.edu<mailto:jyik at g.harvard.edu> )



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Regards
Arindam Basu
Professor, Dept. of EE
City University of Hong Kong
Associate EiC, IEEE TBCAS
Editorial Board Member of IOP Neuromorphic Computing and Engineering
Associate Editor of IEEE Sensors & Frontiers in Neuroscience




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