IBS Conference

Today was the second day of the IBS Conference on Systems Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, held at the SKKU Suwon campus. There were 4 speakers in the morning, and 5 in the afternoon. The talks were delivered by MRI celebrities, with focus on basic science, including: Seiji Ogawa, Joseph Ackerman, Alan Koretzsky, Ralph Freeman, Zang-Hee Cho, John Gore, Robert Turner, and Eliot Stein. There were maybe 100 to 150 in the audience. The turnout was not great but those who attended looked engaged and satisfied. A few things I learned from today's sessions were:

- Dr. Ogawa is interested in looking at fMRI studies on the effect of education, including musical training.
- Dr. Cho showed his radius-adjustable and wobbling PET detector system.
- Dr. Gore discussed neuronal tracking using Mn particles (Mn oxide moves along the axon and across a synapse); Prof. Kim Hyung later explained to me that its physical mechanism is unknown.
- Dr. Turner mentioned that current psychology studies are skewed by the dominant white population in the industrialized countries. Dr. Turner also showed a couple of slides on high-field (7T I believe) QSM in human brain.

The most intriguing to me was the discussion of Dr. Gore about white matter tractography based on functional correlation between neighboring voxels. This appeared very elegant, and I wonder why I never heard about this before.

Fall Semester began!

Easy to remember, the academic calendar for the 2nd semester of 2016 follows very closely the one for the 1st with a 6 month delay. The start of the semester was therefore 9/1, and the end of it will be on 12/21. The week of September 1st was another busy and interesting one for the BME friends and colleagues. We had

- An opening ceremony for the BICS institute in the N Center, with a nice buffet dinner in the gallery area, open to the BME students,
- A research introduction seminar with the Founding director of BICS, Prof. Kataoka, followed by a nice dinner at an upscale restaurant,
- And of course all the hustles and bustles of the start of a semester with undecided students and panicking professors over course registrations.

Also, we have hired a Lab technician to operate the Machine shop on the 1st floor. Welcome to Mr. Cheon, Jin Whan!