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INCF receives $200,000 grant from the Dana Foundation for developing TrainingSpace

16 October 2020

The International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF) has received a grant of $200,000 over two years from the Dana Foundation to support development and curation of educational materials in neuroethics for the INCF TrainingSpace. The Dana Foundation is a private philanthropic organization dedicated to advancing understanding about the brain in health and disease through research grants and public outreach.

The INCF TrainingSpace (TS) is an online hub that makes multimedia educational content from courses, conference lectures, and laboratory exercises from some of the world’s leading neuroscience institutes and societies more accessible to the global neuroscience community. TS provides users with study tracks for self-guided study, tutorials on tools and open science resources for neuroscience research, a Q&A forum, and access to publicly available datasets as well as links to literature references.

“The Dana Foundation has strongly supported Neuroethics from its beginnings with a special focus on the application of neuroscience to human beings and society.  The Foundation sees it as no less critical that the underlying science be rigorous, replicable, open, and ethically conducted. We are therefore delighted to support ongoing efforts of the INCF to provide materials and community connections for the next generation of neuroscientists that will enhance deeper understanding of these shared principles and advance ethical practices in the conduct of science and its reporting.” 
Steven E. Hyman, chairman of the board at the Dana Foundation

The current version of TrainingSpace was launched in 2019 and is continuously populated with educational materials from the INCF network, including the Allen Institute for Brain Science, the Human Brain Project, the Virtual Brain, the CAJAL Advanced Neuroscience Training Programme (FENS, IBRO, the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, University of Bordeaux and the Champalimaud Foundation), and many more. The platform and content development is advised by the INCF Training and Education Committee (TEC), one of the governing bodies of INCF. The TEC consists of representatives from the INCF network and the BD2K Training Initiative, FENS, IBRO, IEEE Brain, iNeuro Initiative, SfN, Canadian Open Neuroscience Platform, and HBP Education Programme. The TEC is responsible for developing, hosting, and supporting neuroinformatics training activities throughout the network and in collaboration with other neuroscience societies.

To date, over 13,000 users from 136 countries have used TrainingSpace, with more than 86,000 page views.

“Training in reproducible neuroscience is one of INCF’s core activities, and we can see from the hub’s fast increasing popularity that there is a need for education resources to be freely available around the globe. With the generous support from the Dana Foundation, the INCF TrainingSpace will be leveraged to help create new bridges from the international neuroethics community to the neuroinformatics community, and grant equal access of people anywhere in the world to curated and vetted educational materials in neuroethics.”
Maryann Martone, chair of the INCF Governing Board

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