Core Courses

The NRT Program Participants are encouraged to take the following core courses as part of the NRT traineeship program. One course per semester may be taken by the NRT trainee, if the trainee and their PI suggest an alternative foundational course, the trainee should email nrt@bu.edu, providing a brief description of the course and how it will impact their dissertation research while supporting foundational neurophotonics learning. The request will be evaluated by the Education Committee for approval.

• BE571/BE771: Introduction to Neuroengineering, Instructor Xue Han – This 4 credit course covers existing and future neurosciences for analyzing brain signals and for treating neurological and psychiatric diseases. All students complete design projects.
• BE572 (BE500A2) Neurotechnology Devices, Instructor David Boas -From electro-physiology to optical and MRI, non-invasive to invasive, neuro-sensing to neuro-modulation, and spanning applications in humans and animals; this course will cover the latest developments in devices used to study the brain. The course will center around eight recent journal papers that introduces or utilizes novel devices for the advancement of neuroscience. For each paper, there will be one or two lectures on the background behind the specific neurotechnology advanced or utilized in the paper.  In the following class, students will be required to critically discuss the given paper, with the discussion led by a group of assigned students who will first present an overview of the paper. For homework, students are required to select four of the eight papers presented throughout the semester and produce a succinct review of each paper. For the final project, the student will produce a 5 to 8 page mini-review paper of an emerging neurotechnology device and give a 10 minute presentation to the class followed by 5 min of questions.
• BI581: Exploring Neural Circuits, Instructor: Alberto Cruz-Martín (4 credit course) or NE741/BI741: Neural Systems: Functional Circuit Analysis, Instructor: Ian Davison (4 credit course) – This course emphasizes primary literature review on topics related to understanding how the logic of neural signaling and networks underlie behavior and cognition and how neural circuits are formed and evolve as a function of experience.
• BE517: Optical Microscopy of Biological Materials, Instructor: Jerome Mertz – This 4 credit course provides hands-on training in state-of-the-art optical microscopy techniques to address questions in biology and biological materials.
• HM801: Bench-to-Bedside: Translating Biomedical Innovation, BU Questrom School of Management – This 3 credit course explores translation of medical technologies into new products and services for the healthcare system.