Director’s Letter

Link to Annual Report for 2023–2024

We continue to see tremendous growth in neurophotonics activities at Boston University. Our 7th Annual Neurophotonics Symposium, held in January 2024, focused on “Machine Learning and Photonics in the Neurosciences.” Organized by Brian Depasquale and Michael Economo, this event had the largest attendance of any of our symposia to date. The symposium was held in Boston University’s newest conference space on the 17th floor of the Computing and Data Sciences Building, offering stunning views of Boston, the Charles River, and a winter sunset. A memorable moment from the event was captured on the cover of the 2024 Neurophotonics Center (NPC) Annual Report, showing Jeff Lichtman, the late afternoon symposium speaker, with the sunset in the background. We’re excited to announce that the 8th Annual Neurophotonics Symposium will take place January 15, 2025 on “Neurophotonics across the animal kingdom – Imaging neural activity in diverse species.”

We’ve seen a significant increase in the number of new trainees in the Neurophotonics Research Training (NRT) program. In 2024, 29 new trainees joined the program, up from 19 in 2023 and an average of 16 in the previous six years. This growth reflects the rising impact of neurophotonics across many labs on campus and the increasing recognition of the benefits of engaging in multidisciplinary activities facilitated by the NPC. To support our growing trainee cohort, we’ve secured a new T32 training grant from the NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for “Graduate Training at the Interface of Neuroscience, Optical Engineering, and Data Science.” We owe a big thanks to Principal Investigators Jerry Chen and Michelle Sander for their leadership in securing this grant, as well as to Boston University for its significant support of this training program.

Since the NPC’s inception in 2017, our training program has included a neurophotonics bootcamp at the end of the trainees’ first year. This bootcamp introduces trainees to the diverse technologies and applications in neurophotonics, as well as to fellow students from eight different graduate programs. With the new T32 grant, we’ve introduced a second bootcamp on “Data Science and Neurophotonics” for trainees finishing their second year. This bootcamp, led by T32 Faculty Statistician Emily Stephen, was a huge success with the students who were eager to delve into coding best practices, version control, data management and super computing topics, as well as hackathons to reinforce those topics. Emily’s dedication and passion were key to its success, and she will continue to work with trainees to expand our monthly tutorial series to include data science topics relevant to neurophotonics. We’ve also restructured the bootcamps based on feedback from prior years, shifting the focus to more hands-on and collaborative activities. NPC Technical Directors Zahid Yaqoob and Meryem Yücel, along with our senior trainees, played a crucial role in this transformation, and we are deeply grateful for their contributions.

NPC Associate Director Chris Gabel has successfully increased collaborations between BU’s Charles River Campus and its Medical School Campus, resulting in several new faculty from the Medical School joining the NPC. He also launched the inaugural Fall NPC Med Symposium, which highlighted new cross-campus collaborations. One rapidly growing area of research is the use of organoids—human cell-based models—to better understand diseases. These organoids offer insights beyond what animal models can provide, especially in the neuroscience field. BU’s efforts in organoid research are expanding quickly, as covered in a recent NPC feature and discussed in this year’s annual report.

Another area of growth at BU is the field of Neuroscience in the Everyday World (NEW). Since 2019, BU faculty have been working together to integrate multi-modal sensors (such as fNIRS, EEG, inertial monitoring units, eye tracking, and audio recordings) with behavioral assessments to study brain activity in naturalistic settings. This work is supported by an NIH BRAIN Initiative Award U01-EB029856, titled “The Neuroscience of the Everyday World – A Novel Wearable System for Continuous Measurement of Brain Function.” Recognizing the importance of this emerging field, the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute has funded an annual conference on Neuroscience in the Everyday World at BU, first held in August 2023 and again in August 2024. These conferences have brought together faculty and trainees from diverse fields, all eager to collaborate and advance their research. We are also thrilled to welcome new faculty, including Matthias Stangl, who expands our work in this area by studying patients with implanted deep brain electrodes. Matthias’ research offers unprecedented insights into neural activity patterns during real-world activities, as detailed in this year’s annual report. Looking ahead, we plan to deepen our collaboration with the Computing and Data Science community at BU to tackle the data science challenges in NEW. Stay tuned—excitement continues to grow!

David Boas
Director, Boston University Neurophotonics Center
August 2024