Training in Neuroscience Imaging: Integrating First Principles and Applications

These training programs provide graduate students with a strong background in the fundamental principles that underlie multiple neuroimaging modalities. In addition, they offer summer short courses that are open to investigators at all levels – from graduate students to established investigators – who are seeking to incorporate neuroimaging into their research programs.  Some of the summer courses are available as webcasts or podcasts through the websites for the programs.

Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard/MIT
The Advanced Multimodal Neuroimaging Training Program of Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Massachusetts General Hospital is designed to train a new cadre of neuroscientists who possess the necessary physical science knowledge, computational skills, and familiarity with team science that optimally position them to make major contributions in neuroimaging. Students will be trained to understand the bases of several neuroimaging methods - including functional magnetic resonance imaging, magnetoencephalography, electroencephalography, positron emission tomography, and near-infrared spectrography - and to apply them toward fundamental principles as well as pressing issues in cognitive neuroscience. The pre-doctoral program is designed to facilitate interdisciplinary interactions in neuroimaging through project-based joint mentorship. In addition to a pre-doctoral program, a short-term program suited for individuals at any stage in their career is offered.
Project Director: Bruce R. Rosen, M.D., Ph.D.

The University of Pittsburgh
Advances in in vivo imaging techniques allow neuroscientists to visualize nervous system physiology and function at molecular, cellular, and systems levels. The Multi-Modal Neuroimaging Graduate Training Program was established as part of the Center for Neural Basis of Cognition and is operated jointly by the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. Its purpose is to provide a new generation of interdisciplinary scientists with training in basic neuroscience and underlying principles of neuroimaging, as well as modeling and applications of different neuroimaging tools in an integrative context. Imaging tools include structural magnetic resonance imaging, functional MRI, positron emission tomography, magnetoencephalography and optical imaging.
Project Director: Seong-Gi Kim, Ph.D.

University of California, Los Angeles
The Neuroimaging Training Program provides combined graduate training in the principles of neuroscience and the technology of a wide variety of instrumentation methods. The emphasis is on core knowledge, such as electrical signaling, image processing, statistical analysis, and signals and noise, which the trainees can ultimately use to develop and customize methods within the neuroimaging platform to answer their own research questions. A separate short course program will be run annually to offer training and collaboration opportunities at UCLA to more senior investigators. Forty-eight investigators at UCLA and CalTech participate as faculty in the training program.
Project Director: Mark S. Cohen, Ph.D.