The meeting will take place at the Conference Center of the Rensselaerville Institute which is about 25 miles southwest of Albany in the Helderbergs. Its facilities include a large auditorium with all the necessary audiovisual equipment, a lecture hall, and smaller conference rooms for discussion groups. The restaurant on campus provides meals and refreshments. Overnight lodging is provided on campus. Transportation is available to and from the Albany-Schenectady Airport and the Albany-Rensselaer Amtrak Station. The Center’s secluded and scenic location fosters intensive and productive interactions among meeting participants in a casual environment. (DRIVING DIRECTIONS)

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ACCOMMODATIONS

If you have accepted an invitation to the BCI Workshop, your reservation either on or off-campus has been made. Every effort is being made to house everyone at the Institute

► Space is limited. Requests for single rooms (at the attendees’ expense) will be honored only if space allows.

►If you have special housing or dietary requests, or have any questions about your room request, please contact Theresa Vaughan (vaughan@wadsworth.org or +1-518-486-4920).

► If you have been assigned off-campus housing and have chosen to stay at the Desmond Hotel. Their phone number is 518-869-8100. Please use group code #10W14O. Transportation will be provided mornings and evenings between the Desmond and the Rensselaerville Institute. If you have any questions, please contact us directly

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SCHEDULE!

Please plan to arrive at the Conference Center Tuesday, June 14, after 2 pm. There will be a reception that evening. Laboratory presentations will begin Wednesday morning at 8:30 am and continue throughout the day. It is important that participants arrive by Tuesday evening and stay through Sunday morning. We hope that you honor this request.

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FORMAT

MORNING PROGRAM: WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY, and FRIDAY MORNINGS will be devoted to brief (i.e., 10-min) presentations in which one representative from each lab will summarize that lab’s BCI research. Thus, by the end of these presentations, everyone should know what everyone else is doing.

AFTERNOON PROGRAM: As at the first two BCI meetings, we would like to focus on a series of key topics crucial to BCI research and development. To this end, we are planning four concurrent workshops, each of which will span WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY, and FRIDAY afternoons. Each workshop will engage 25-35 participants and will focus on one of the four topics in a program combining invited talks, targeted discussions, and sharply focused debates. Each workshop will be responsible for preparing a 90-min. presentation for a plenary session (see below), and for producing an article on its topic for the IEEE special issue. To ensure the continuity and success of these workshops, which extend over 4 days, we urge participants to plan on attending the entire meeting. The four topics planned for these workshops are:

Workshop I: Signals and Recording Methods (Org: Jon Wolpaw and Jerry Loeb) (Roster)

Workshop II: Signal Processing: Feature Extraction and Translation (Org: Dennis McFarland and Chuck Anderson) (Roster)

Workshop III: Clinical Issues and Applications (Org: John Donoghue and Andrea Kűbler) (Roster)

Workshop IV: Technology: Software and Hardware (Org: Gerv Schalk and Febo Cincotti) (Roster)

These topics are broadly drawn and we expect that the specific subtopics addressed in each workshop may change and/or expand in response to your comments and suggestions. We are very much interested in your thoughts on both the format and content of these four workshops. You will be contacted by your workshop organizer once assignments are made.

EVENINGS: The keynote address will be given on WEDNESDAY EVENING by Dr. William J. Heetderks, Director of Extramural Science Programs at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Biomedical Engineering (NIBIB). Dr. Heetderks is a long-established researcher, co-founder of the Neuroprosthetics program at the National Institute of Neural Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), and a widely respected expert in all aspects of BCI research. THURSDAY and FRIDAY EVENINGS will be devoted to posters and to demonstrations of BCI systems. Students are strongly encouraged to participate in the poster presentations. Awards in several categories will be presented for student posters.

SATURDAY PROGRAM: Each workshop will make a 90-minute summary presentation to all the meeting participants summarizing the workshop’s conclusions. There will be a banquet on SATURDAY EVENING (Sponsor: Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, Inc. )

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POSTERS

►The exhibition space for posters is almost entirely limited to ceiling-to-floor panels that are 48 inches wide. Contact us with questions.

►Participants may submit a 450 word abstract (including title, authors, and funding) for publication in the program with the abstract submission form. Please indicate at the top of the form that it is a poster submission.

►There will be a poster competition with the winners announced at the Saturday evening banquet. (Sponsors: G-Tec, OEG and Cortech Solutions, LLC) back to the top

BCI COMPETITION III

Benjamin Blankertz will report on the results of the third BCI competition (http://ida.first.fhg.de/projects/bci/competition_iii/ ) in a special discussion session Friday. back to the top

STUDENTS

Students must be recommended by their advisors. Students are strongly encouraged to submit posters and will be included in workshops and panel presentations to the greatest extent possible. back to the top

PRESENTATION GUIDELINES (MORNINGS)

If you are scheduled to give a morning lab talk, please refer to the presentation formatting instructions below. In order to allow each lab to present, EACH TALK WILL BE STRICTLY LIMITED TO A MAXIMUM OF 10 MINUTES AND 8 SLIDES. IT SHOULD BE A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE LAB’S INTERESTS AND ACTIVITIES. WE URGE EACH SPEAKER TO FOCUS ON THREE POINTS: (1) THE LAB’S MAIN AREA OF INTEREST; (2) ITS RECENT ACHIEVEMENTS; (3) ITS PLANS FOR THE FUTURE.

In order to minimize delays between talks, please send us your PowerPoint file before the meeting or give it to us at registration on Tuesday. (PLEASE REMEMBER: NO MORE THAN 10 MINUTES AND 8 SLIDES!!)

FORMATTING

In order to minimize delays between presentations, we would like your presentation media by registration on Tuesday, June 14th. To help us anticipate, if you haven’t already done so please email us our preferred presentation format and whether you will use your own laptop and/or your presentation will include audio and/or video:*

The following presentation formats are available:

Overhead transparency
35mm "blue" slides
Microsoft PowerPoint

The preferred presentation format is Microsoft PowerPoint. Speakers using computer projection are urged to bring their media on a Windows-readable DVD or CD-ROM or on a Plug and Play USB storage device. Speakers must bring a copy of all external files contained within their PowerPoint presentations, such as sound or movie files (wav, avi, mpeg, etc.). Speakers using slides are urged not to bring slides thicker than 1/8", the maximum thickness that can be accepted by standard trays and projectors.

* Please contact us if your presentation format is not listed.

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PROCEEDINGS

IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering will devote the March 2006 issue to the workshop. The issue will begin with an article summarizing the meeting and providing an up-to-date review of BCI research and development. This summary article will be followed by papers from each of the workshops and from each laboratory. For your lab’s Short Communication to be included, it must be submitted to the IEEE TNSRE website by June 19, the last day of the meeting. Manuscripts should be in the form of the IEEE Transactions Short Communication (i.e., up to 2000 words or no more then five Transaction pages including figures.) Please follow the “Instructions to Authors” found on the web at http://www.ieee.org/organizations/pubs/transactions/information.htm.

Download IEEE’s manuscript template: Microsoft Word || LaTeX: manuscript (PC & MAC) or (Unix) – bibliography (PC & MAC) or (Unix) || PDF (Instructions only)

The templates can also be downloaded from IEEE or by visiting the link listed above.

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DEADLINES:

BY MAY 17, via this website:

• Each lab should submit one <600-word abstract describing the lab’s research, to be included in the program.

• Each poster presenter must submit a <450 word abstract describing any poster you may wish to present.

• If you wish to present a demonstration, you need to send: a <250 word abstract describing the demonstration; your requirements for space, furniture, power, etc.; and a description of the format of the demonstration.

• Your travel plans so that we may arrange transportation to and from Albany International Airport. (When you make your travel plans, please note that we can provide guaranteed transportation to and from the airport on Tuesday and Sunday only. Since the drivers are participants at the meeting, we can provide this airport transportation for arrivals and departures on other days only as the program permits. The conference site is about approximately 40 minutes from the Albany, NY, airport; the cost of a taxi one-way to Rensselaerville is about $50; or you may wish to rent a car at the airport.)

PAYMENT

BY JUNE 14:

Attendees:

• Per person fee for the meeting. The all-inclusive fee for the meeting is US $195 per person per day. This fee includes: registration; single room for 5 nights; all meals from Tuesday dinner to Sunday breakfast; all materials, meeting room fees, and refreshments; transfers to and from the Albany airport. If you are housed in a double room, the fee is US $170 per day. If you are commuting to and from the meeting, 8 AM to 9 PM, including lunch and dinner, the price is US $105.00 per person per day.

Scholarship Students:

• If you are the student designated to be your lab’s recipient of support from our meeting funds, your all-inclusive meeting fee will be covered by our meeting funds. Please submit your travel expenses so that you can be reimbursed (up to $250 for travel) as soon as possible.

Workshop Organizers:

• Please submit your travel expenses so that you can be reimbursed as soon as possible.

FORMS

FORM I

FORM II

PLEASE MAKE YOUR CHECKS PAYABLE TO THE RENSSELAERVILLE CONFERENCE CENTER

BY JUNE 19:

• For your lab’s short communication to be included in the March 2006 issue of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, it must be submitted to the IEEE TNSRE website (http://embs-ieee.manuscriptcentral.com/) by June 19, the last day of the meeting. All papers will undergo peer review prior to their final acceptance for publication. For instructions to authors please see the IEEE website (http://www.ieee.org/portal/cms_docs/pubs/transactions/auinfo03.pdf.)

IF YOU HAVE OTHER QUESTIONS OR CONCERNS, PLEASE DO NOT HESITATE TO CALL OR WRITE US.

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