Winter School: Neurotechnology Applications on Aging-Related Disorders
NEUROTECHSCHOOL 2018
Neuronic
Havana, La Habana, Cuba
Jon Clucas
January 30, 2019
While visiting Mike Milham at the Child Mind Institute in September 2018, Pedro A. Valdés-Sosa (of the Joint China-Cuba Laboratory for Frontier Research in Translational Neurotechnology and the Cuban Center of Neuroscience) also visited the MATTER Lab. After his visit, he invited us to lecture at NEUROTECHSCHOOL 2018 Winter School: Neurotechnology Applications on Aging-Related Disorders in Havana, Cuba.
On the second day of the winter school, Eduardo Martínez‐Montes gave a PARAFAC presentation, Nibaldo Hernández Mesa discussed successful aging (Gilgamesh factor),
Arno presented “On-person vs. in-person mental health assessment & intervention”, Jon presented “MindLogger: Mobile Data Collection Application for Assessment and Intervention”, and Curt presented “Reverse Engineering & Rapid Prototyping for Wearable Devices” and “Prototype Fabrication Time Series Build Steps”.
The full schedule of the winter school is available on the Cuban Center for Neuroscience website, along with photos, videos and slides.
For me, the most interesting lecture I attended passively was Danilo Bzdok’s “Big-data approaches to population phenotypes in neurodegenerative disease”, in which he convincingly argued for considering statistical significance and predictive power as separate, not-necessarily-related, model criteria.
We also got a tour of CNUERO from Pedro 
and got to explore Old Havana in the evenings.
Both Havana and Old Havana were gorgeous. In the photo below, we’re in Old Havana facing Havana.
We were able to ride in classic American cars reporposed as Cuban taxis.
Internet connectivity was noticeably limited, though we did find a monument to Wi-Fi.
We have a lot of overlapping projects with our Cuban colleagues, including NEUROGer, their counterpart to MindLogger.
We’ll definitely continue to pursue collaborative opportunities with the people we spoke with at this winter school.