Marc Hamilton's Weblog: Marc Hamilton's Weblog

Neural imaging took on a very personal note for me last summer when my daughter suffered a bad concussion after taking a nasty fall during a bicycle ride with dad. But I have always been interested in the work of LONI, UCLA's Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, which runs one of the largest compute clusters on campus.

This Spring, from April 13-15, 2009, LONI will bring together some of the top neural imaging researchers from across the Pacific Rim at the New Horizons Human Brain Imaging: A Focus on the Pacific Rim conference on the Big Island of Hawaii. A short description of the event follows.

Neuroscience is entering an era where large-scale approaches are highly advantageous for examining and interpreting the growing amounts of data being obtained in studies using in vivo neuroimaging approaches. Novel and integrative approaches to the analysis, interpretation, and applications for these data are necessary. This meeting seeks to foster discussions among researchers along the Pacific Rim that focus on mutual interests, sharing of data, and collaborative efforts. Key meeting themes will include emerging neuroimaging methodologies and technologies, the interpretation of results and consideration of individual variability, high performance computational modeling and statistics, integrative genomic approaches, clinical utility, and the growing significance of international collaboration. Held just prior to the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) annual conference in Honolulu, this meeting is expected to draw 60+ leaders in the field of neuroimaging from around the Pacific to explore commonalities and future joint neuroimaging research directions. The list of invited speakers includes Peter Bandettini (Bethesda), Kang Cheng (Saitama), Gary Egan (Melbourne), Scott Grafton (Santa Barbara), Michael Miller (Santa Barbara), Stephen Strother (Toronto), Andrew Stenger (Honolulu), Arthur Toga (Los Angeles), and John Van Horn (Los Angeles). The meeting has received generous sponsorship from the National Institutes of Health, Institute for Collaborative Biomedicine (ICB) at UCSB, Sun Microsystems, International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF), International Brain Research Organization (IBRO), UC Pacific Rim Institute, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), and has been endorsed by the ISMRM. A small number of student fellowships will be awarded to deserving students. Special hotel rates are available for meeting attendees.