Barrel Cortex Function 2016

Organizers: Fritjof Helmchen, Jochen Staiger, Heiko Luhmann, Christiaan De Kock
Funded by: Multiple sponsors
Invited speaker gender ratio: 3 Women : 25 Men (11%)
Estimated* base rate of females in the field: 27% (average of two estimates)

*Method of estimation: Searching NIH RePORTER with keywords “barrel” AND “cortex” and counting the ratio of women among the unique researchers in the 43 active grants gave 28%. A second search on active grants with keywords “somatosensory” AND “cortex” gave 202 results with 176 unique PIs, 26% of them women.

Persistent Maladaptive Behaviors: Why We Make Bad Choices

Organizers: Suzanne Haber and John Foxe
Sponsored by: The University of Rochester School of Medicine, the Ernest J. Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience, and the Silvio O. Conte Center
Invited speaker gender ratio: 8 Women : 17 Men (32%)
Estimated* base rate of females in the field: 45%

*Method of estimation: NIH RePORTER search with keywords “maladaptive” and (“decision making” or “choices”), count the number of women among the 38 unique results.

2016 CCN Workshop: Predictive Coding

Organizers: James Haxby, Hervé Abdi, Lars Muckli, Sam Nastase and Adina Roskies
Invited speaker gender ratio: 1 Women : 11 Men (8%)
Estimated* base rate of females in the field: 24%

*Method of estimation: A search of NIH RePORTER with the term “predictive coding” returned 9 results, 3 of them women; but since the workshop website did not provide much text regarding the topics of the workshop, and not all invited speakers work on predictive coding or computational neuroscience as such, we resorted to the general base rate of women in neuroscience.

Göttingen Advanced Computational  Neuroscience Summer School

Organizers: Rainer Engelken, Joscha Liedtke, Agostina Palmigiano, Manuel Schottdorf, Jens Wilting
Invited speaker gender ratio: 0 Women : 8 Men (0%)
Estimated* base rate of females in the field: 17%

Note: this calculator shows that the likelihood of having no women in an unbiased sample of 8 speakers, even in a field with only 17% women, is only 23%

*Method of estimation: Previously established base rate for computational neuroscience.

Second Interdisciplinary Symposium on Information-Seeking, Curiosity and Attention (Neurocuriosity 2016)

Program Committee: Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, Teodora Gliga, Jacqueline Gottlieb, Manuel Lopes
Funded by: the British Academy and the Inria/Columbia University Neurocuriosity project
Invited speaker gender ratio: 6 Women : 14 Men (30%)
Estimated* base rate of females in the field: 43%

*Method of estimation: Searching NIH RePORTER with the terms “intrinsic motivation” OR “curiosity” OR “information seeking” (we did not include the term “attention” as it is used in many other meanings) returned 68 results, among them 27 women and 36 men unique PIs.

The Brain Prize meeting 2016: Synapses and Memory

Program Committee: Jean-François Perrier, Martin Røssel Larsen, Morten Skovgaard Jensen, Anders Nykjær, and Jan Egebjerg
Funded by: Lundbeckfonden
Invited speaker gender ratio: 1 Women : 9 Men (10%)
Estimated* base rate of females in the field: 39%

*Method of estimation: Searching NIH RePORTER with the terms “synapse” AND “memory” returned 38 pages of results. We counted the unique PIs in pages 4, 7 and 10 and found 25 women and 39 men, suggesting a base rate of 39%. Since the meeting is a very high-profile meeting associated with a general prize in neuroscience, the general base rate of women in neuroscience (24%) may also be applicable.

Computational Neurology Conference 2017

Organizers: Roman Bauer, Anupam Hazra, Luis Peraza Rodriguez, Peter Taylor, Yujiang Wang
Funders: see here
Invited speaker gender ratio: 0 Women : 9 Men (0%) (currently confirmed)
Estimated* base rate of females in the field: 28%

*Method of estimation: Searching NIH RePORTER with the terms “computational” AND “neurology” returned 8 women and 21 men unique PIs. This is a small sample, however, since the conference is advertised as gathering researchers “applying advances in computing and neuroscience for clinically relevant purposes” other base rates, such as from computational psychiatry are also relevant, and suggest the same number.

Transylvanian Experimental Neuroscience Summer School

Organizers: Raul Mureşan, Adam Kampff & Florin Albeanu
Funders: see here
Invited speaker gender ratio: 2 Woman : 19 Men (10%)
Estimated* base rate of females in the field: 24%

*Method of estimation: Base rate of women among faculty in top neuroscience programs.

11th Bernstein Sparks Workshop: Naturalistic integration of information from external stimulation into the ongoing neuronal activities of the brain

Organizers: Andrea Huber Brösamle, Dorothe Poggel and Agnes Jansen (organizers), Udo Ernst and David Rotermund (local organizers)
Invited speaker gender ratio: 2 Women : 19 Men (10%)
Estimated* base rate of females in the field: 26%

*Method of estimation: Searching NIH RePORTER with “cortical connectivity” OR “neuroprosthetics” OR “stimulation interfaces” OR “neurostimulation” returned 73 unique PIs, 19 of them women.

International Symposium on the Neuromechanics of Human Movement

Organizers: Manish Sreenivasa
Invited speaker gender ratio: 4 Women : 18 Men (18%)
Estimated* base rate of females in the field: 30%

*Method of estimation: Searching NIH RePORTER with the term “neuromechanics” brought 13 results, 12 unique PIs, out of them 2 women (17%). As the conference website notes that “talks will be delivered by researchers working in computational neuroscience, biomechanics, clinical gait analysis and rehabilitation robotics”, we also searched with those terms (with an OR relationship) and obtained 34 pages of results. We then counted the percentage of women out of unique PIs on pages 10 and 20.