8/23/06: Meeting Minutes

The NETI officers had a meeting yesterday, after our student seminar. Here are a few of the things we discussed:

*Collaborations*

Debbie (the Chairperson) suggested that students "shadow" a clinical faculty member. Issel (the Organizational Vice President) is currently working with the leader of the Neurosurgery Interest Group (NSIG) to initiate a "shadowing" program. NSIG usually invites clinical faculty speakers to their meetings. Members of NETI will be alerted of these meetings, and meet more clinical faculty. NETI first years will also be required to "shadow" a clinical faculty member for two weeks, during Developmental Biology if they are taking the Medical School courses, or during Intercession if they are taking the Alternate Track. After that time, they will brainstorm a few engineering ideas to ease particular medical problems, and will be encouraged to develop these ideas as part of their research or propose those ideas to engineering faculty.

Issel has also created a Google Group / Mailing List called "neuroengineering3" (http://groups.google.com/group/neuroengineering3) for intercollegiate collaboration in the realm of Neuroengineering. Hopefully, this will provide a forum for discussing neuroengineering solutions.



*Budget*

Misti (the Financial Vice President) will get a list of our budget and email a list of our expenditures to neuroengineering@gmail.com Emails to the GoogleGroups have been sent to neuroengineering@gmail.com, which we will use as a searchable archive of information. Progress reports, ideas, and emails should be cc'd to this address in order to keep a record of NETI information.

Other ideas for funding include:

• A symposium, either Hopkins-based or intercollegiate
  
• Continuing the summer seminar into the school year, with refreshments
  
• A gathering in February or March, once the new students have joined the training grant,in order to get to know each other and encourage collaboration.
  
• Conferences, especially having all members of NETI go together
  
• T-shirts

*Fall Seminar*

For the fall seminar, we would like to invite faculty for "chalk talks" -- quick overviews of their research that also mention possible rotation projects for interested students. Once all of the faculty of the Neuroengineering Training Grant have introduced the students to their research, we will schedule laboratory tours. After that, we will invite faculty speakers from other areas of interest, such as pharmacology or genetics, in order to spur collaborative interest. We will also invite previous trainees and/or alumni to speak at the seminar.

We would also like to collaborate with NSIG and other neuro-based groups at Hopkins to encourage an exchange of information between departments. NSIG invites clinical faculty to speak at their meetings.



*Website*

Andrew Cassidy and Issel Lim are categorizing the content on the website (http://neuroengineering.bme.jhu.edu) to make it more user-friendly. We have already added journals and conferences to the Resources page, and would like to add a list of grants or other funding opportunities. We will be editing the home page, putting the faculty research information with the faculty contact information, categorizing the research focuses, and proposing training opportunities for the new trainees (e.g., microscope training, workshops, research compliance tests, and coursework requirements from the PhD handbook). We will also add a section for "Previous Trainees" on the Students page, and another section for "Alumni."



*Formal Elections*

After the new trainees are selected, we will hold formal elections within the group. The current positions are: Chairman, Organizational Vice President, Financial Vice President, Secretary/Historian, Treasurer, Webmaster. We would also like to include an Outreach Coordinator that will focus specifically on collaborations and publicizing NETI events.

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Quite a few new students came to the seminar, and we answered a lot of their coursework and labwork questions. We will also be talking to them at the Neuroengineering Reception on Friday.

Please let me know if you have any questions, suggestions, or ideas. Thank you very much!