Conference Watch

2016 CCN Workshop: Predictive Coding

/ BiasWatchNeuro

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.

Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain 2015 Meeting

/ BiasWatchNeuro

Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain 2015 Meeting

Invited speaker gender ratio: 5 Women : 30 Men (14%), of these:
full length talks – 1 Woman : 13 Men (7%)
    spotlight (brief) presentations – 4 Women : 17 Men (19%)
Simons Global Brain Investigators: 8 Women : 61 Men (12%)
Estimated* base rate of women in the field: 17-18%

*Method of estimation: Previously established base rate for computational neuroscience (assuming the collaboration is focused only on computational approaches).

Göttingen Advanced Computational Neuroscience Summer School

/ BiasWatchNeuro

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.

Neurocuriosity 2016

/ BiasWatchNeuro

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.

No prize-worthy women?

/ BiasWatchNeuro

Not only conferences, but many prize committees suffer from the same unintentional biases, awarding women with fewer than 10% (and sometimes 0%) of awards. Here are a few examples:

Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience – Awarded since 2008, to 8 men, no women (current selection committee: 7 men, 1 woman)

The Brain Prize – Awarded since 2011, to 19 men and 2 women (current selection committee: 6 men, 3 women)

Koetser Award – Awarded by the Betty & David Koetser Foundation for Brain Research since 2006, to 11 men and 1 woman, jointly awarded with her husband (selection committee not publicly available)

This lack of women recipients is not due to lack of women engaged in prize-worthy cutting-edge neuroscience research, as apparent from prizes that are awarded to women proportionally to their base-rate in science:

Edward M. Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience – Awarded since 2004, to 10 men and 4 women (current selection committee: 4 men, 2 women)

Base rate of women researchers in neuroscience: 24% as estimated by the percentage of women faculty in top neuroscience programs in USA

Base rate of women researchers in computational neuroscience: 17-18% as estimated from the percentage of women attendees at COSYNE

The Brain Prize Meeting 2016

/ BiasWatchNeuro

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

/ BiasWatchNeuro

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.

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

/ BiasWatchNeuro

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.