ACCN 2015 Pre-School (5 - 7 August, 2015)

The main course targets both students with a biological/experimental background (“experimentalists”) and ones with a quantitative background (“theorists”). Two primary objectives of the course are to help students cross the traditional discipline boundaries that most are still trained in, and to get experimentalists and theorists to collaborate on a research project.

For the experimentalists, this often means catching up on their math and programming skills; for the theorists, on their (neuro-)biology. Because course projects will be computer-based, “catching up” is asymmetrical. When theorists engage on a course project, they can usually get by with limited neurobiological background. When experimentalists engage on a course project, however, they need some proficiency in programming and a solid understanding of the underlying mathematics.

To level the playing field and counterbalance this asymmetry, we offer a pre-school that teaches students with little or no programming skills the basics of modern programming languages (e.g., MATLAB or Python). The pre-school will also provide refreshers on standard math topics such as linear algebra and calculus, important to better follow the course. While a three-day school cannot be a replacement for the mathematical education that students from quantitative disciplines enjoy, it will give students a sufficient head-start to focus on lecture contents and the research projects, once the main course starts.

Please note, that there is an additional fee for the Pre-school: EUR 245, which covers tuition, housing, and boarding for the extra days.