Summary Report of the 16th Canadian-IBRO School for Neuroscience 2023
 
Due to the pandemic and related difficulties in travelling to Canada in 2021 and 2022, the 14th and 15th Canadian-IBRO Schools were delivered virtually. In May 2023, we held the 16th Canadian IBRO School in Montreal, a two-week in-person school for students in the 14th and 15th virtual Schools. The school’s organizing committee consists of Drs. Ellis Cooper (Director), Melissa Vollrath (Co-Director), Ante Padjen, David Ragsdale, Albert Aguayo, Arjun Krishnaswamy, and Michael Hendricks. 
 
At the in-person 16th Canadian IBRO School, students completed the virtual schools by presenting their research at the Canadian Association for Neuroscience (CAN) annual meeting, observed experiments in progress, learned about the latest imaging techniques and equipment, carried out hands-on labs, and visited with Canadian neuroscientists in the Montreal-Ottawa- region. 
 
The 16th Canadian IBRO School had 3 components. The first part included a session on scientific writing that reinforced concepts and writing strategies taught during the virtual schools, as well as in JanuaryFebruary during the online sessions as the school participants prepared their abstracts for submission to the annual CAN meeting. In addition, there were interactive workshops on single-cell RNA sequencing, as well as on techniques to access and analyze data in available online databases. Following this, students queried public databases to analyze gene expression in brain areas related to their research. This portion also included discussions on the use of model organisms in neuroscience research. 
 
The second component included the Annual meeting of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience where the students attended keynote lectures and symposia, interacted with Canadian neuroscientists, and received valuable feedback on their research. 
 
The third portion included: i) visits to Drs. A Peyrache’s and J. Britt’s labs to observe experimental methodologies and equipment used to measure single neuronal activity simultaneously from groups of neurons in different brain areas in live, behaving animals; ii) sessions on bioimaging, including 2-photon microscopy, a discussion of new global bioimaging initiatives and training centers; iii) a hands-on lab to analyze imaging data; iv) a 2-day lab conducting optogenetic and behavioral experiments on model organisms; v) writing computer code and using DeeplabCut (introduced in the virtual school) to analyze videos of behaving animals; finally, vi) student visits with scientists working in their specific areas, including researchers at the University of Ottawa and Toronto. 
 
As part of the 16th Canadian IBRO School, we maintained contact with the students over Zoom throughout 2022-2023 in advance of their visit to Montreal. Before the IBRO school participants submitted their abstracts to the Annual meeting of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience, we held five 90-minute science writing sessions over Zoom in late January and February 2023. Here we discussed and helped students revise their abstracts for greater clarity and concision. In addition, in April, we met again over Zoom to provide comments on the posters that they presented at the Annual meeting.

 
 
Attendees of the 16th Canadian-IBRO School in Montreal
 
The students had high praise for the School. They unanimously stated that the School will be very beneficial for their future careers, exposing them to new areas of research, and giving them the opportunity to discuss lectures informally with internationally recognized scientists. They also valued the interactive sessions on how to write effective abstracts and scientific manuscripts. While the students said that the virtual component was very interesting, all believed strongly that the combined virtual and in-person components were essential to the program’s success. They all agreed that the in-person component fostered interactions and learning, pedagogical elements that can be challenging over Zoom. Equally important, in-person sessions gave students the opportunity to observe live experiments and learn about experimental techniques not readily available at home. For example, the students indicated that they greatly appreciated learning about how to record neural activity with tetrodes or with genetically encoded reporter constructs during behavioral experiments, as well as observing experiments that modulated neuronal activity with optogenetic stimulation. The students commented: “This School was an excellent experience. It exposed me to several interesting topics” “I really enjoyed the opportunity to talk with international experts and meeting my fellow students. It was very motivating.”; “I hadn't had a lot of experience in using python or programming so I think it was very useful to learn about it.” “I felt that the virtual component was very well organized: having the prerecorded lectures in advance and 90 minutes of discussion in a live zoom session was great because we could think about our questions in advance.”; “Everything about the School was great.”
 
In conclusion, the hybrid School was an unqualified success and the School organizers plan to use this hybrid model for future schools. Nonetheless, the School encountered a serious impediment: unfortunately, 5 students from Africa who participated in the virtual schools were unable to obtain their visas in time to attend the 16th in-person School because the Canadian immigration process was unpredictably long. To remedy this, we plan to send acceptance letters well in advance of the School start date, allowing students more time to obtain their visas. A second issue raised by many of the students related to the time allotted for the virtual component of the School. The previous virtual Schools (14th and 15th Schools) took place during a one-month period, with 90-minute classes held every day; however, many were unable to attend all sessions because of time constraints. Given this, the organizers plan to hold the virtual component over several months, with sessions occurring only once or twice a week.