Bridging the Gap: How Neuroinformatics is Preparing the Next Generation of Neuroscience Researchers.

Abstract

Neurotechnology and big data are two rapidly advancing fields that have the potential to transform our understanding of the brain and its functions. Advancements in neurotechnology have enabled researchers to investigate the function of the brain at unprecedented levels of granularity at the functional, molecular, and anatomical levels. Thus, resulting in the collection of not only more data, but also larger datasets. To fully harness the potential of big data and advancements in neurotechnology to improve our understanding of the nervous system, there is a need to train a new generation of neuroscientists capable of not only domain expertise, but also the computational and data science skills required to interrogate and integrate big data. Importantly, neuroinformatics is the subdiscipline of neuroscience devoted to the development of neuroscience data and knowledge bases together with computational models and analytical tools for sharing, integration and analysis of experimental data, and advancement of theories about the nervous system function. While there are only a few formal training programs in neuroinformatics, and since neuroinformatics is rarely incorporated into traditional neuroscience training programs, the neuroinformatics community has attempted to bridge the gap between the traditional neuroscience education programs and the needs of the next generation of neuroscience researchers through community initiatives and workshops. Thus, the purpose of this special collection is to highlight several such community efforts which span from in-person workshops to large-scale, global virtual training consortiums and from training students to training-the-trainers.