Future BNCI Workshop Utrecht

Last Updated on Saturday, 31 December 2011 15:59 Written by Clemens Brunner Tuesday, 19 April 2011 13:32

Future BNCI WORKSHOP - Utrecht, 19 May - 2011.

"Major Issues in BCI Research"

In conjunction with Brain Computer Interfacing in 2011

The Future BNCI project hosted a workshop on 19 May 2011 at the Academiegebouw in Utrecht, the same city that hosted the Brain Computer Interfacing in 2011 conference. This workshop was open to anyone who is involved in BCI or BNCI research, and we had a good mix of attendees from different disciplines, groups, and experience. The workshop consisted primarily of focused discussions, so we will not have any invited speakers. These discussions facilitated collaborations, increased awareness of other groups and projects, and is leading to improvements to our FBNCI roadmap and other work in progress.

Here is a picture of most participants in our 2011 Utrecht workshop.

Click here to download the first presentation from the morning session.

Click here to download the second presentation from the morning session.

The morning and afternoon sessions also included case scenarios. The workshop attendees divided into small groups, and each group discussed a case scenario to consider key BCI issues for each scenario. We then presented our conclusions to the group. Click here to see one of these presentations.

Click here to download notes from the workshop.

Our schedule was:

0930-1000: Coffee and informal discussion

1000-1100: Major problems and challenges

1100-1230: Breakout groups: developing case scenarios for individual users

1230-1400: Lunch and informal group discussion

1400-1530: Presentation of case scenarios to plenary session

1530-1600: Coffee break

1600-1700: General discussion of other major issues, decided by the attendees. Possible topics included:

• Europe and implantable BCI research
• Friendly software tools
• Joint dissemination
• Surveys of users, businesses, and researchers
• Common platforms, file formats, and guidelines
• Passive monitoring systems
• Non-EEG signals for BNCIs
• Encouraging future funding
• Trends and solutions
• "Five Year View" for different user groups

At 1700, we concluded the workshop. Many of us participated in a group photo (shown above) and walked to our social event, which was not far from the workshop.

1730-1930: Social Event - From the history of music to the future of BCI :

Sometimes the most essential things are discussed when you put stakeholders in new and fun environment. We hosted a social event right after the workshop. After some refreshing drinks and some light snacks, we had a tour through the museum "Speelklok". This museum is dubbed the most cheerful museum of the Netherlands and has a broad collection of musical instruments. The tour guide showed us many magical devices from the history of music. The tour guide even made references to our work, and we were impressed with the complex engineering of many musical devices. We also discussed major issues in BCI research and developed plans for later in the conference and future conferences.

There was no registration fee. Costs were covered by the Future BNCI, TNO, TMSi, Barcelona Digital, and the European projects BRAIN (ICT-2007-224156), BrainAble (ICT-2009-247447).

The following attendees were scheduled for all or part of the event (some could attend only in the afternoon):

Graz University of Technology
Brendan Allison, PhD
Aleksander Valjamae, PhD
Anna Sanmarti, BA

University of Twente
Dirk Heylen, PhD
Femke Nijboer, PhD
Anton Nijholt, PhD
Mannes Poel, PhD

g.Tec
Christoph Guger, PhD
Armin Schnürer
(Attended part of event; not shown in photograph)

EPFL
Gangadhar Garipelli, MS

Philips
Gary Garcia, PhD

TNO
Jan Van Erp, PhD

F.C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging
Robert Oostenweld, PhD

Donders institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior
Paul Tiesinga, PhD

UMC Utrecht
Nick Ramsey, PhD

Old Dominion University
Dean Krusienski, PhD

Starlab
Stephen Dunne

TMSi
Leo Hoogendoorn

Barcelona Digital
Filip Velickovski

University of Maastricht
Rainer Goebel

Dr. Aleksander Valjamae and Anna Sanmarti filmed part of the event for the FBNCI project, and are not shown in the photograph above. Some of the video that they filmed will be available in July 2011.

At the conference after the workshop, FBNCI printed and brought posters from other projects in the cluster. We mounted the posters in the poster area where other attendees could see them.