Training and Dissemination Core

Training & Dissemination Abstract To support its Training & Dissemination goals, the Center for Mesoscale Mapping (CMM) calls on a broad range of outreach and training programs and modes of dissemination, building on those established by the MGH Martinos Center. The outreach and training efforts encompass a host of different programs at both the local and the national level. Locally, this effort involves directly engaging graduate students, postdoctoral trainees and faculty in the TR&D Projects and partnering with established training, education and mentorship programs within and outside the institution, including at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). For this renewal, we will add a new hands-on module to the MIT courses taught by CMM faculty, with a focus on educating and making available the cutting-edge tools developed in the CMM to the researchers who audit our training courses. By actively engaging graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and young faculty in TR&D (and CP/SP) research, the CMM supports career development and provides intensive, hands-on training for the next generation of basic and clinical neuroimaging researchers and ensures the long-term growth of the CMM. Nationally, by offering courses and workshops such as the long-running fMRI Visiting Fellowship, the Connectivity Course (Connectivity Course: Structural and Functional Brain Connectivity via MRI and fMRI), the Freesurfer Workshop and a Coil Building Workshop to be hosted by the Martinos Center’s new MakerSpace and Rapid Prototyping Lab, the CMM will ensure that opportunities to learn the technologies developed by its faculty extend beyond these local groups to a larger community of geographically distributed users at all career stages. Its dissemination activities are similarly wide-ranging. Knowledge gleaned from CMM research will be disseminated through conventional means (papers and presentations), remotely viewable seminars including the CMM-sponsored BrainMap series, a Mesoscale Symposium introduced last year and slated to be held throughout the renewal period, and a robust web and social media presence. Technology dissemination will take advantage of open-source sharing of software and hardware documentation, including through a portal on the CMM website. To further extend the impact and broad use of CMM technologies, we will also continue to work with companies to provide commercial access to hardware and software tools, including all interested industrial parties from small SBIR-supported companies to the largest industrial partners like Phillips, General Electric, and Siemens to license both our hardware and software innovations.