Boot Camp

When students arrive in August they participate in Neuroscience Boot Camp along with the Neuroscience students. Boot Camp is an intense pre-graduate laboratory course, patterned after summer courses at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, MA, with a series of intensive lab exercises. Topics covered include single-cell electrophysiology, computational modeling, molecular techniques, slice physiology, and imaging. In addition, faculty members highlight the major research interests being pursued in their laboratories, and students give informal talks about the research they have done before entering the graduate program. The goals of Boot Camp are to introduce new students to basic ideas and techniques in neuroscience, to acquaint them with a number of faculty members and senior graduate students (who serve as Teaching Assistants), and for the entering students to meet one another.

Retreats

During each year there are a number of retreats and seminars that computational neurobiology students are invited to participate in, including the Annual Neurosciences Retreat, Joint Symposium on Neural Computation with other Southern California institutions, and the Annual Retreat for Cognitive Neuroscience.

Seminar Series

The Salk Institute and the Division of Biological Sciences provide frequent lectures as do many other departments and institutions in and around UCSD. In addition, there are several weekly seminars available to students.

• Neurosciences Seminar Series: features visiting researchers speaking on a wide variety of research topics [schedule]
• INC Seminar Series: sponsored by the Institute for Neural Computation, focusing on a more computational theme [schedule]
• Sloan-Swartz Chalk Talk Series: sponsored by the Sloan-Swartz center for Theoretical Neurobiology at the Salk Institute
• INLS Dynamics of Nervous System: sponsored by the Institute for Nonlinear Science

Presentations

Students gain practical experience in presenting research in a variety of activities. The Institute for Neural Computation sponsors monthly dinners for graduate students and post-docs to present their research results for feedback in a casual, comfortable setting. Research rounds is a weekly seminar course for first and second year students in both the Computational Neurobiology and Neuroscience graduate programs in which students beyond their second year present their current research. The Program also offers a faculty-led journal club for the first and second year students. Finally, students tend to organize their own reading groups to discuss current books in the field.

Student Recreation

Believe it or not, students do find time for activities other than research. The program sponsors monthly joint social hours with other graduate programs on Fridays, and students will often get together for parties, picnics on the beach, nights out dancing. There is ample opportunity for outdoor recreation, including the weekly pick-up soccer games at the Salk and ultimate frisbee games on campus. Our current students find a variety of ways to take advantage of all that UCSD has to offer, ranging from surf lessons through the Mission Bay Aquatic Center , glass-blowing in the crafts center, and rock-climbing in the gym on campus.

Funding

All students accepted into the Computational Neurobiology program receive full financial support. This support is comparable to other doctoral programs across the country, and includes stipend, tuition, fees, and health insurance. Support comes from a variety of sources including training grants and, once students join labs, direct support from thesis advisors. Additionally, our students have proven highly competitive in earning internal and external fellowships, especially National Science Foundation GRFs and the National Institutes of Health NRSAs (see students).