This is an executive summary of some of the activity that has occurred in the past few months compiled from posts made to our Facebook group page and to Twitter.
Please note that not every post or news item is repeated here. We selected posts/items that we felt might be of greatest interest to society members. This necessarily involved some discretionary choices, but we made our best effort at fair representation of what’s going on.
Nevertheless, if you know about relevant activity that you think should be included here, please contact us with your comments so that we can be more comprehensive in our coverage. Also, for what it’s worth, the order of presentation here is arbitrary. For future newsletter issues, we encourage you to announce events via the Facebook group or on Twitter using the hashtag #fNIRS.
ManyBabies Consortium for replication and best practices in developmental psychology research.
Posted by Judit Gervain on FB, Feb. 25, 2020

ManyBabies consortium is a collaborative project for replication and best practices in developmental psychology research. The goal is to bring labs together to address difficult outstanding theoretical and methodological questions about the nature of early development and how it is studied.
Streaming 3000 fNIRS channels over WiFi and performing full volume HD-DOT reconstruction in real time
Posted by Rob Cooper on Tw., Feb. 21, 2020
2 day fNIRS and NIRx workshop in Berlin
Posted by Lydia Timm
Prof Jem Hebden gave this year’s (centenary) Joel Lecture at UCL
Posted by Rob Cooper on Tw., Feb. 17, 2020
The Joel Chair is the oldest-established Chair in Medical Physics in the world.
Diffuse Optical Mapping of Human Brain Function using NIRFAST and NeuroDOT: A Hands-on course

Posted by Hamid Dehghani on FB, Feb. 2, 2020
This course will teach modeling and processing approaches for using diffuse optical methods for mapping brain function in humans. This includes near-infrared light propagation modeling in tissue using the freely distributed NIRFAST software package as well as temporal data processing and image reconstruction using the NeuroDOT software package.
Continue reading.
New adult fNIRS lab in Denmark
Posted by Daina Crafa on FB, Jan. 30, 2020
A new grant from the Carlsberg Foundation will build a function near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) laboratory at the Interacting Minds Centre (IMC). The IMC is an international hub for researchers investigating social processes and an optimal home for fNIRS devices in Denmark.
Continue reading.
Symposium on fNIRS for auditory function at the ARO Midwinter Meeting
Posted by Maria Angela Franceschini on FB, Jan. 25, 2020

Thanks to Antje Ihlefeld and Robert Luke for organizing a symposium on
fNIRS for auditory function at the ARO Midwinter Meeting. Great speakers,
good data and beautiful results. Hope to see more and more fNIRS adoption on this field.
NIRSTORM Mini-Course on Concordia University

Posted by Christophe Grova on FB, Jan. 6, 2020
The purpose of this mini-course was to introduce NIRSTORM as a user-friendly and fully complete environment dedicated to fNIRS statistical analysis. The first section was dedicated to beginners, introducing NIRSTORM database, data importation and classical channel-space fNIRS processing. Recent updates were presented including the most advanced NIRSTORM features, such as the integration of MCXLab software and advanced 3D reconstructions.
Continue reading.
Maria Angela Franceschini promoted to Full Professor
Posted by MGH Martinos Center
Shared NIR Format (SNIRF) specification ready to be adopted.
Posted by David Boas on FB, Nov. 10, 2019
The Shared NIR Format (SNIRF), to facilitate the sharing of fNIRS data, is now ready to be adopted by your favorite fNIRS acquisition system and fNIRS data analysis software. The broad fNIRS community has contributed to the development of this specification over the last few years. But it was left to a small group to provide example files implementing the specification. Now that these are ready, please encourage the hardware and software developers to adopt SNIRF and incorporate it into their systems. Example readers, writers, and data files can be found through github.com/fNIRS/snirf.
Thanks to Jay Dubb, Qianqian Fang, and Ted Huppert for working hard to complete this. The documentation still needs polishing, so please provide feedback through the issues forum on GitHub.
fNIRS Training Workshop – November 6-8, 2019
Posted by Maria Angela Franceschini on FB, Nov. 8, 2019

The BU Neurophotonics Center organized a 3-day course on functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) on November 6-8, 2019. The course included lectures, hands-on sessions with fNIRS instruments, and a strong emphasis on data analysis exercises using the Homer3 software.
The NIH Infant and Toddler Toolbox of neurodevelopmental measures
Posted by John Spencer on FB, Nov. 4, 2019
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a contract to a consortium of scientists from over 20 institutions, led by Northwestern University, to develop the NIH Infant and Toddler Toolbox, an efficient and comprehensive battery of neurodevelopmental measures for use with children ages 1-42 months. We are seeking input from the scientific community to help inform the creation of this neuropsychological, cognitive and social assessment battery.
World’s first Todderlab at Birbeck
Posted by Clare Elwell on Tw, Oct. 17, 2019
Setting up a field fNIRS neuroimaging lab in rural Cote d’Ivoire
Posted by Kaja Jasinska on Tw, Oct. 9, 2019