Welcome to the October 2017 issue of the SfNIRS newsletter.
 | fNIRS 2018 Updates fNIRS 2018 preparations are underway. The program committee members have been confirmed and include representatives from diverse backgrounds and from all around the world. The webpage, fnirs2018.org, will be active in a couple of weeks. We will soon be posting information about the program committee, invited speakers and deadlines. Looking forward to seeing all of you in Tokyo. Co-chairs Gentaro Taga and Turgut Durduran |
 | SfNIRS News: Education Committee We are pleased to announce the formation of the Education Committee, chaired by Judit Gervain. The mission of the Education Committee is to provide information about, promote and organize training sessions and other educational material related to the use, applications, data analysis and interpretation of fNIRS techniques. See the list of members at fnirs.org/about-us/committees |
 | SfNIRS News: Standardization Committee Alessandro Torricelli is organizing a standardization committee. The role of this committee is to provide the fNIRS community with a collection of best practice guidelines for supporting all aspects relevant to the fNIRS technique, from performance assessment of instrumentation to correct implementation of fNIRS measurements, from basic data analysis procedures to advanced statistical methods. Read more about the mission of the committee at: fnirs.org/strengthening-the-society-first-steps-towards-standardization Please make sure to fill up the survey at: https://goo.gl/forms/7AdpudZ84uWY3PSf2 We really need your input, and email Alessandro if you are interested in joining this committee. |
 | SfNIRS News: Communication Committee Rebecca Dewey, Rodrigo Forti, Sarah Lloyd-Fox, and Katherine Perdue had to leave us pending new commitments. We thank them for all the help supporting the newsletter over the last two years. Congratulations to Noman Naseer, Sergio Novi, Yumie Ono, Felipe Orihuela-Espina and Meryem Yucel who have joined the Communication committee. The new CommComm line up can be viewed at: fnirs.org/about-us/committees/commcomm/ |
 | Feature Research: How early adversity affects the brain Prof. Charles Nelson and collaborators in Dhaka, Bangladesh are performing the first-ever comprehensive brain imaging study on children exposed to a range of biological and psychosocial hazards to development, including infants who are stunted. Read more at: fnirs.org/early-adversity-brain By Kaja Jasinska |
 | Feature Story: Emerging role of fNIRS in BCI applications The use of fNIRS for brain-computer interface (BCI) was first proposed by Coyle 2004, who demonstrated the feasibility of a two-class BCI using signals from motor cortex. Since then, there has been substantial progress in fNIRS-based BCIs, with fNIRS now implemented in a wide range of BCI applications. Continue reading at: fnirs.org/bci-fnirs By Noman Naseer and Frank Hu |
 | NIRS in the News: An application in hearing augmentation A new application of fNIRS focused on hearing impaired children at the Bionic Hearing Institute in Melbourne, Australia was featured in the September 11th issue of The Herald Sun. Read more at: fnirs.org/fnirs-hearing-augmentation By Heather Bortfeld and Luca Pollonini |
 | Funding Opportunities News: From the NIH BRAIN Initiative Officers After the first successful round of awards, the NIH BRAIN Initiative has published notices of intent to reissue the FOAs for a subsequent round of applications in research area devoted to develop non-invasive imaging tools to study the human brain. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-EB-17-005.html and grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-EB-17-006.html . Applications are due in the winter of 2017. Read more at: fnirs.org/nih-brain-initiative-awards-2017 |
 | Local News: Boston Last July, Dr. David Boas, after almost 20 years, moved from the Martinos Center at Massachusetts General Hospital to Boston University to launch a Neurophotonics Center. Continue reading at fnirs.org/boston-local-news By Meryem Yucel |
 | From the Secretary: Membership The Society for functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy is rapidly growing. The number of members has reached 354. Membership has many benefits: a discount on fNIRS conference registrations (this now already includes the conference in Tokyo in Oct. 2018), reduced subscription cost to the SPIE journal Neurophotonics, access to SfNIRS member-only web content (e.g. the literature reviews on fNIRS), and subscriptions to the regular newsletter and emails. The membership fee is only $95 for two years for full members and $50 for two years for students. We encourage you to join the society and become part of this vibrant community. You can find instructions on how to join here: fnirs.org/membership Martin Wolf |
 | Job Opportunities (Source: Facebook; please keep posting!) Postdoctoral positions are currently available at: University of Pennsylvania, USA; ICFO, Barcelona, Spain; Northeastern University, Boston, USA. Doctoral studentships: ICFO, Barcelona, Spain; Bionics Institute, Melbourne & Sydney, Australia. List prepared by Sabrina Brigadoi. fnirs.org/job-postings/job-posting-2017 |
 | Neurophotonics Special Issue Updates Neurophotonics is publishing a Special Section on fNIRS. This special section brings together papers presented at the fNIRS 2016 conference held in October 2016 in Paris, as well as other contributed papers on near-infrared spectroscopy. The Special Section has received such a high number of submissions that it is being published in three parts. More info by special editor Judit Gervain at: fnirs.org/neurophotonics-special-issue-updates |
 | fNIRS Publications A list of papers collected by Frank Hu and highlighted on FB and Twitter in the last few months can be found on our website: fnirs.org/publications-highlights-september-2017/ The “NIRS/NIRI newsletter project” is currently on pause due to the increasingly numbers of papers published. We are currently working how to automate the process. New issues will be uploaded to the SfNIRS members section then. |
 | fNIRS in Twitter: fNIRS Journal Club Under the hashtag "#fNIRS_JC" one can find on Twitter posting about new fNIRS papers. The idea of having a fNIRS journal club on Twitter was initially discussed in the beginning of 2016 by David Highton, Gemma Bale and me. Everyone that posting about a fNIRS paper on Twitter is invited to use this hashtag. Post with hashtags #fNIRS and #fNIRS_JC will be automatically retweeted by the fNIRS Journal Club group on Twitter. Felix Scholkmann |
 | Facebook Group The Society for functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy group on Facebook continues to grow. We now have 750 members. The role of the Facebook (FB) group is to promote members’ research progress, facilitate discussions, and exchange information. The FB group is the primary source of information for the newsletter, so please share! |
fNIRS Featured Events and Training Opportunities |
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 | Feature Event: MexNIRS Symposium Updates Everything is almost ready for the 1st Mexican Symposium on Near Infrared Spectroscopy Neuroimaging (MexNIRS) that will be centered on the fascinating topic of Global NIRS. We are glad to confirm that, despite the strong earthquake that hit the region on October 19th, MexNIRS symposium won’t be altered. See you in Cholula on October 20 and 21, 2017! Felipe Orihuela-Espina tells us the latest updates at: fnirs.org/mexnirs-meeting-updates |
 | Upcoming Meetings A list of meetings related to fNIRS, maintained by Dany Forster, can be found at: fnirs.org/resources/relatedmeetings. In additions members asked us to highlight the following meetings: * 2f-NIRS 2017: The 4th annual meeting of the French network on functional Near InfraRed Spectroscopy, 12-13 October 2017, Lille (France). org/2f-nirs-2017 * One-day Symposium on functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy, January 16, 2018, Boston University. |
 | Optics @ Martinos 17th fNIRS Course Our annual fNIRS course is scheduled for Nov 1-3, 2017 in Boston. This intensive course, mixing lectures and hands-on training with a growing focus on hands-on data analysis training, is always very popular and fills up with a waiting list. So please ensure that you register early. Details at: nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/training/fnirs |
 | 5th Autumn School on Functional Optical Imaging and Cerebral Oximetry With the French Society of Clinical Neurophysiology, the University of Picardie Jules Verne and the Faculty of Medicine develop, in the framework of the neurodevelopment and neuroscience an Autumn School entitled Functional Optical Imaging and Cerebral Oximetry. The Fifth Autumn School will be held in 2017, November 20-24th at the Medical Faculty, 3 rue des Louvels Amiens, France. More info at: fnirs.org/5th-european-autumn-school |
 | Highlights of Past Meetings Posts about the following meetings can be found at our webpage:
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Disclaimer: While we encourage translation of fNIRS technology to commercial products by our members, the Communication Committee and the fNIRS society doesn’t endorse any for-profit or non-profit entity and doesn’t receive any compensation for reporting news about commercial products.
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