OHBM blog: 2019 roundup

BY NILS MUHLERT (Lead editor)
The OHBM blog is now entering its fifth year. In that time it’s moved from primarily an interview-based format to embrace a diverse range of educational and entertaining posts. In 2019 this culminated in the introduction of the popular ‘How to’ series. This leveraged the rich content of previous OHBM lectures to teach novices, intermediates and experts about setting up and analysing resting-state fMRI and diffusion MRI studies, and using machine learning in neuroimaging. Spearheaded by Ilona Lipp, our Chair Elect for the Communications Committee, these painstakingly crafted posts offer one of the best freely available resources for those wanting to get to grips with these techniques. We also managed to shine the spotlight on neuroimaging efforts in China and Iran, and plan to continue highlighting brain mapping across the globe throughout the ‘roaring 20s’. Finally, my personal highlight from 2019 was to interview Bruce Rosen. He offered not only deep insight and historical perspectives of fMRI but did so with good humour. Looking forward to more next year.

ELIZABETH DUPRE
Although I've contributed to the blog before, this was my first official year on the comms team. I'm happy to have spent the year focussed on open science efforts in our own community, such as the OHBM open science room and the Aperture survey results. Now I'm looking forward to a new year (and decade) of open, inclusive, and exciting brain science here on the OHBM blog!

DAVID MEHLER
My main contributions in 2019 were about Open Science (OS) initiatives, engaging the public as well as other science communities. So it was an honour to work with Teodora Stoica to narrate short fairy tale about Registered Reports for the Scientific American. It was also a great experience t 12o work with other OS enthusiasts on a blog post about our study preregistration hackathon, held at the last meeting of the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) in Rotterdam. For 2020 I look forward to writing more about the clinical relevance of neuroimaging.

ILONA LIPP
2019 was not only a fun but also a very educational year of blogging for me. The posts that I have been working on essentially aim to gather and summarize experience and advice from the very smart people in our field on various topics. This year we covered keeping a healthy work-life balance, how to apply machine learning in neuroimaging, hot to carry out highly clinically applicable neuroimaging (Interview with Gil Rabinovici), how to teach MRI stats (Interview with Jeanette Mumford) and how to do diffusion MRI. Stay tuned and get ready for more in 2020!

JEAN CHEN
In my final year as part of the OHBM Blog Team, I wanted the chance to tackle a topic close to my heart --- work-life balance in academia. Fortunately, we had enthusiastic participation from scientists around the globe, volunteering their experiences to guide a up-and-coming generation of young scientists. I enjoyed partnering with Ilona on this piece, and am proud of it as my final contribution to the OHBM blog.
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EKATERINA DOBRYAKOVA
This year I greatly enjoyed interviewing neuroscientists for the OHBM blog. One of the interviews was with the OHBM 2019 keynote speaker, Tianzi Jiang. The second was for a blog on understanding neurological conditions such as multiple sclerosis, reaching out to various experts in the multiple sclerosis MRI community for their take on where the field is moving and the value of old and new approaches.

CHAO-GAN YAN
My mission on the OHBM Communications Committee has been to help OHBM extend its communications to Chinese audiences. In my time on this team I I have created a Wechat Official Account for OHBM, on which we translated some popular OHBM blogs and news from OHBM. More importantly, working with the OHBM China Chapter, we have hosted three Annual Chinese Young Scholars events for OHBM (2017, 2018, 2019). These events aim to bring together Chinese researchers with diverse backgrounds to discuss and collaborate on cutting edge neuroscience research topics and methods. As my term at the Committee comes to an end, I hope to continue working with the Committee to organize these events and help improve collaborations between the Chinese brain imaging community and OHBM.

TZIPI HOROWITZ-KRAUS
This year I had the pleasure and honor of interviewing one of the OHBM 2019 keynote speakers, Dr Armin Raznahan, on his career path and exciting research combining genetics, neuroimaging, and child brain development. My next blog post echoed key themes from the OHBM conference in Rome with that of the first Israeli Human neuroimaging conference took place in Jerusalem focusing on unique neuroimaging acquisition methods, pathologies and child brain development. Last but not least, we are currently working on an exciting blog article exploring the relations between screens exposure and brain development. Can’t wait for the topics we will cover in 2020!

CLAUDE JULIEN BAJADA
2019 has been a whirlwind! I spent most of my time writing two “How-to” blogs focused on machine learning in neuroimaging and, my favorite topic, diffusion MRI. I also interviewed one of the 2018 OHBM keynote speakers; Thomas Yeo where he described his path from electrical engineering to neuroscience. The experience collaborating with colleagues to write the educational blogs has been amazing, and the response from the community heartening. I look forward to more “How-to” in 2020!

A special thanks to all the contributors, editors and members of the Communications Committee for their dedication and effort on the OHBM blog. Happy New Year to all. If you are interested in contributing to the OHBM blog in 2020, please complete a contributor interest form!