Niko Sirmpilatze
@nikosirmpilatze.com
350 followers 850 following 11 posts
London-based neuroscientist 🧠 & research software engineer 💻 developing free and open-source tools for studying brains & behaviour, @neuroinformatics.dev @sainsburywellcome.bsky.social at UCL. Committed to open, collaborative, and reproducible science.
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Reposted by Niko Sirmpilatze
brainglobe.info
We are incredibly proud to receieve this award, especially as it recognises the hard work of the entire BrainGlobe community.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to BrainGlobe over the years!
theneuro.bsky.social
🏆Announcing the laureates of the Neuro - Irv and Helga Cooper Foundation Open Science Prizes 2025!

🎉 Join us in celebrating the laureates at the award ceremony, featuring a special lecture from International Prize laureate representative from the BrainGlobe initiative.

#OpenScience #Neuroscience
The Neuro – Irv and Helga Cooper Foundation Open Science Prizes: Meet the winners of an exceptional edition
This year’s edition of the Irv and Helga Cooper Foundation Open Science Prizes at The Neuro, organised by the Tanenbaum Open Science Institute, was exceptional in every way. With a record number of ap...
www.mcgill.ca
Reposted by Niko Sirmpilatze
simonwillison.net
I figured out a uv recipe for running tests for any project with pyproject.toml or setuppy using any Python version:

uv run --python 3.14 --isolated --with-editable '.[test]' pytest

I've wrapped it in a uv-test script:

uv-test -p 3.11

Full details here: til.simonwillison.net/python/uv-te...
setup.py
nikosirmpilatze.com
This is cool! I didn’t know you could use Marimo together with Quarto like that!
Reposted by Niko Sirmpilatze
scientificdiscovery.dev
In general I think it's hard to combat scientific misinformation when some of the best research is locked behind an academic paywall, while lots of nonsense gets published free for everyone to read in predatory journals.
Reposted by Niko Sirmpilatze
sainsburywellcome.bsky.social
At SWC, we’re not afraid to ask bold questions. We’re striving to understand how the brain gives rise to behaviour.

Join us for your PhD!

🧠 World-class training in systems neuroscience
💰 Fully-funded 4-year programme

Apply by 3 Nov ⬇️

www.sainsburywellcome.org/web/content/...
Reposted by Niko Sirmpilatze
antihebbiann.bsky.social
And we are live!

Excited to announce the 2025 Multi-Agent Behavior Challenge on cross-lab supervised action recognition in mice 🐁🐀🖱️

Running on Kaggle until December 15th, with a $50,000 prize pool going to the top five submissions!

www.kaggle.com/competitions...
https://www.kaggle.com/competitions/MABe-mouse-behavior-detection
nikosirmpilatze.com
I enjoyed chatting with Peter about my @softwaresaved.bsky.social fellowship. Tune in for the backstory behind animals-in-motion.neuroinformatics.dev
and @neuroinformatics.dev 's "Open Software Week".

PS: Code for Thought is a great podcast to follow if you’re into research software.
Reposted by Niko Sirmpilatze
neuroinformatics.dev
New guest blog by @marcodv.bsky.social about our open software summer school, held at @sainsburywellcome.bsky.social.

neuroinformatics.dev/blog/perspec...

Stay tuned for information about next years event, which will be bigger and better!
Some of the summer school participants, gathered after the summer school hackday.
Reposted by Niko Sirmpilatze
biig-ucl.bsky.social
BIIG seminars are back! 🎉

12-1pm on 12th September:
- Kaixiang Shuai (LMCB, UCL): Creating the first Drosophila imaginal wing disc atlas
- Aikta Sharma (UCL Mechanical Engineering): Predicting Osteoarthritis in the Tibial Epiphysis with Synchrotron X-ray CT and Digital Volume Correlation
nikosirmpilatze.com
Thanks to our amazingly engaged participants, including @carlocastoldi.bsky.social, @rebeccalowes.bsky.social, @annthomp.bsky.social and many many others.
nikosirmpilatze.com
Had a blast teaching "Animals in Motion" last week, together with my @neuroinformatics.dev colleagues.

All course materials, including hands-on coding exercises, are freely available as an online book:
🔗 animals-in-motion.neuroinformatics.dev/latest/
Logo of the "Animals in Motion" course, showing silhouettes of a mouse, a crab and a shark, with keypoints overlaid on the animal shapes.
Reposted by Niko Sirmpilatze
neuroinformatics.dev
Thank you to everyone who came to Open Software Week. We had a great time, and we hope you all left with new knowledge, ideas or collaborations.

#niu_osw
Reposted by Niko Sirmpilatze
giuliapaci.bsky.social
Courtney @courtneyl7a7.bsky.social has written a lovely piece on this wonderful community initiative we’ve been running for 5 years at UCL - have a read! And follow @biig-ucl.bsky.social !
focalplane.bsky.social
📢New post on FocalPlane - Connecting Researchers Through Bioimaging: Reflections from UCL’s BioImage Interest Group

Courtney Lancaster @courtneyl7a7.bsky.social‬ reflects on the success of the BioImage Interest Group at UCL, offering a template for other communities.
Connecting Researchers Through Bioimaging: Reflections from UCL’s BioImage Interest Group - FocalPlane
Connecting Researchers Through Bioimaging: Reflections from UCL’s BioImage Interest Group -
focalplane.biologists.com
Reposted by Niko Sirmpilatze
neuroinformatics.dev
The BrainGlobe track started with an introduction to image analysis with @napari.org, and then tutorials on how to use @brainglobe.info to register data to atlases, and how to detect cells in whole-brain microscopy images.

All our tutorials are online: brainglobe.info/tutorials

#niu_osw
Reposted by Niko Sirmpilatze
thetransmitter.bsky.social
How can birds keep enough control to fly while drifting in and out of sleep? In an excerpt from their new book published today, @evoneuro.bsky.social and Georg Striedter explore this and other questions about neural mechanisms that regulate bird sleep.

bit.ly/45mfwgn

#neuroskyence
‘Bird Brains and Behavior,’ an excerpt
In their new book, published today, Georg Striedter and Andrew Iwaniuk dive deep into the latest research on the neural mechanisms of avian behavior. This excerpt from Chapter 2 explores how birds…
www.thetransmitter.org
nikosirmpilatze.com
Not quite scientific history, but I’ve really enjoyed reading “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”–a collection of essays about the open-source movement.

www.catb.org/esr/writings...
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
My third book
www.catb.org
nikosirmpilatze.com
Still a few weeks to register for some hands-on training and hacking on open-source tools for analysing animal motion, whole-brain microscopy with @brainglobe.info, and big imaging data. 🧠📈

Aug 11-15 at @sainsburywellcome.bsky.social in London.

"Free as in beer" and travel stipends available.
neuroinformatics.dev
We're excited to announce the Neuroinformatics Unit Open Source Week, August 11-15 2025 in London, UK.

Bringing together researchers and developers of open-source software for training, community-building and hacking.

No cost and travel stipends available.

neuroinformatics.dev/open-softwar...

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Reposted by Niko Sirmpilatze
Reposted by Niko Sirmpilatze
softwaresaved.bsky.social
🟢 Applications are now open for two SSI Fellows' events: Niko Sirmpilatze's "Animals in Motion" and Alessandro Felder's "Big Imaging Data". These events will take place during the NIU Open Software Week running between Monday 11 and Friday 15 August in London.
www.software.ac.uk/news/ssi-fel...
NIU Open Software Week
nikosirmpilatze.com
Had a blast at #ASABSpring2025, presenting movement and meeting many enthusiastic early career researchers.

If you're into tracking animal movements in videos, do apply for the "Animals in Motion" workshop I'm organising in London this August: neuroinformatics.dev/open-softwar...
A schematic representation of "Movement: a Python Toolbox for Analysing Motion Tracking Data".
Reposted by Niko Sirmpilatze
maxplanck.de
In an open letter of support to the President of @harvard.edu, Max Planck President Patrick Cramer @patrick-cramer.maxplanck.de has expressed his full support of the University in its stance against demands by the Trump administration to change its policies in order to retain federal funding.
A photo of Max Planck President Patrick Cramer and the words: "Threats to science anywhere are threat to science everywhere".
nikosirmpilatze.com
As part of this event, I will be running a 2-day hand-on workshop, for folks that want to use open-source software to study "Animals in Motion".

Thanks to the generous support of @softwaresaved.bsky.social & @sainsburywellcome.bsky.social

More info at neuroinformatics.dev/open-software-week
Reposted by Niko Sirmpilatze
ninelk.bsky.social
Excited to share our new pre-print on bioRxiv, in which we reveal that feedback-driven motor corrections are encoded in small, previously missed neural signals.