The goal of this project is to modify a brainhack environment running neurodesk so that it can be used for neuroimaging research and collaboration, worldwide.
Steffen Bollman has provided access to a shared Oracle Cloud Infrastructure environment. While this is still available free of charge through brainhack, we plan to install neuroimaging tutorial datasets and software to monitor the novice learner's experience. We plan to test modifications of the graphical user interface that may enhance learning success for complex neuroimaging tasks. Human factors design principles will be applied to understand learning barriers and to inform successive revisions of the Universal GUI. The UGUI will be like a "roadmap" to point novice users to the resources they need to rapidly gain fundamental neuroimaging research skills. We suspect that understanding where novice users get stuck might help neuroimaging software developers introduce design features to overcome these "speedbumps."
While the target of this endeavor is the novice user, we hope that access to a rich pool of evolving talent will attract senior scientists to serve as mentors and collaborators in entry-level research projects that will be pursued using the edu_cloud_neurodesktop environment. While the initial tutorial landscape will focus on common neuroimaging applications already included in neurodesk, we hope that additional tutorials will eventually be included to cover:
- code sharing resources such as github,
- data sharing repositories such as the ida.loni.usc.edu,
- public supercomputing facilities such as XCEDE and the neuroscience gateway, and
- cloud resource education sites such as Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and others.
Note: This is a work in progress. Feel free to reach out if you'd like to help. John R. Absher, MD [email protected]