For the 2020 fNIRS Conference to be held Oct 11-14, 2020 in Boston, we are planning an expanded educational workshop with multiple mini-courses running in parallel and repeated over the weekend of October 10-11, 2020.
To meet the growing needs of the fNIRS community, and provide courses at the beginner and advance level, we envision that academics and companies will want to offer a mini-course on, for example, their specific hardware, software, or any other relevant training topics.
This invitation is being extended to all in the community. Once we receive the proposals, the fNIRS 2020 organizing committee will then review them and make selections for which proposed mini-courses to include in the program. Preference will be given to mini-courses and hands-on demonstrations with a strong educational component.
Your mini-course or hands-on demonstration proposal should preferably be no more than 1 page in length with a hard stop at 2 pages (Arial 11 pt on A4 or 8.5×11” paper with 0.5” margins). The proposal should include the title (<125 characters) and brief synopsis (<1500 characters) of the course, these will be used verbatim for the website and workshop materials. The rest of the proposal should describe the rationale for the course, what the participants will learn from the course, and details of how the time will be used. You should then end your proposal with a description of the maximum number of participants per session, AV needs, square footage needed for any equipment that might be used for the training, and any special power requirements. All rooms will have one projector or large video monitor with HDMI and VGA connections. And all rooms will have 120V outlets able to support 15 amps.
There is no compensation for giving the mini-courses, and for-profit companies need to pay a $800 fee to give a hands-on demonstration. Those fees will be used toward supporting lunches and coffee breaks. This will help keep the registration fee as low as possible for participants of the educational workshop.
We anticipate that each topic may be repeated based on demand. As such, we should be able to schedule up to 12 different mini-courses over the weekend.
Because of the limited number of slots available, preference will be given to mini-courses and hands-on demonstration with a strong educational component. The fNIRS 2020 organizing committee will review and select the courses to be included in the program. Proposal submission deadline is October 1, 2019.
Please submit your proposal by October 1, 2019 to Meryem Yucel.