Jonathan Simon selected for National Academies' NAKFI conference

Associate Professor Jonathan Simon (ECE/Biology), an affiliate of ISR, has been selected to attend the 10th Annual National Academies Keck Futures Initiative (NAKFI) conference, “The Informed Brain in a Digital World” at the Academies’ Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center in Irvine, Calif., Nov. 14–17, 2012. The conference will focus the discipline of neuroscience on the challenges and opportunities presented by the digitally connected world.

Participants are selected through a competitive application process. At the conference they present posters on their latest research and participate in interdisciplinary research teams that develop a possible scientific plan to solve an outstanding challenge. The goals of the research teams are to spur new thinking, have people from different disciplines interact, and forge new scientific contacts across disciplines.

About NAKFI
NAKFI is a 15-year effort of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine to catalyze interdisciplinary inquiry and enhance communication among researchers, funding organizations, universities, and the general public. The objective is to support the climate for conducting interdisciplinary research, and to break down related institutional and systemic barriers. NAKFI works towards these objectives by harnessing the intellectual horsepower of approximately 150 individuals from diverse backgrounds who apply to attend its annual “think-tank” style conference; and by awarding $1 million in seed grants – on a competitive basis – to conference participants to enable further pursuit of bold, new ideas and connections stimulated by the conference.

The NAKFI conference theme changes each year. Professor K. J. Ray Liu (ECE) participated in a NAKFI conference on “Seeing the Future with Imaging Science” in 2010.

Published June 1, 2012