#PLOS #SfN15 preview: build your itinerary with this great new tool
Planning your itinerary for #SFN15? You could go through the entire program book, browsing sessions and posters one by one, day after day… Or you could turn to the very innovative and extremely user-friendly tool designed by members of Konrad Kording’s lab at Northwestern University. In a nutshell, you begin by typing anything you’re interested in–be it an author’s name or a keyword–into the research field. The tool then parses the conference’s abstract database, à la Google, showing you a list of abstracts that match your query. Now comes the good part: you can “like” or “dislike” these abstract and thus refine the search ever more finely. No excuses anymore for missing that fantastic Wednesday afternoon poster in row ZZZ!
Below is an introduction to the itinerary planning tool by Prof. Kording himself.
My lab has a long standing interest in the science of science, we like to ask what makes scientists successful, what the signatures of good reviewers are, and how scientists should search. So it was quite natural that, after years of frustration with the process of making SFN itineraries we decided to get involved ourselves. Which can be found at:
Our criteria were:
- Content not person based – find great research by unknown scientists
- Use relevant/ irrelevant input – I can not describe what I care about, but I know it if I see it.
- A super lightweight design – Simplicity is king
- Scalability – SFN is BIG.
So a new student, Titipat Achakulvisut (@titipat_a) and an awesome postdoc Daniel Acuna (@daniel_akuna) designed a system that fulfills the criteria. We are taking all the feedback we can to make it better.
Konrad Kording is a professor at Northwestern University where he focuses on data science for neuroscience. He likes Bayesian statistics, but loves things that work. He likes stories in neuroscience but loves those that explain a lot of data.
SfN 15 attendees: be sure to check out Pierre’s new post on some interesting “Satellite Sessions” taking place before the official start to the meeting on Oct 17th.
And this preview of the October 14th PLOS Science Wednesday AMA on redditscience featuring fMFI scientists Ben Inglis and J.B. Poline.