From learners to collaborators; this group from Iran connected through Neuromatch Academy and continued their growing interest in computational neuroscience and deep learning though the Impact Scholars Program. 🎤 Mo Shakiba explains, "I joined the Neuromatch Deep Learning course with my friend Rana Rokni, and those three weeks completely hooked us on computational neuroscience and deep learning. After the course, we wanted to keep going in the Impact Scholars Program. I posted looking for collaborators, Mohammad Mohammadi DM’d me, we met—and that turned into both a great collaboration and a real friendship. We were inspired by the public release of the MICrONS dataset, the first to align neural activity with anatomical connectivity in the mouse brain. That led us to explore spatially embedded recurrent neural networks adding a taste of anatomical and functional constraints to see the effect on performance and the network properties. The dataset was massive, and this was our first real research project—challenging, but incredibly rewarding. With Neuromatch’s support and the assistance of our mentor, Nima Dehghani, and access to computational resources , we turned the work into a micropublication, a poster, and presentations at CNS*2025 and the Kempner Institute Frontiers in NeuroAI conference." 🌟 Their advice to anyone considering a Neuromatch Academy course: "Impact Scholars proved that Neuromatch won't just teach you skills—it opens doors to to real research and collaboration!" Their experience shows how Neuromatch Academy can turn curiosity into real research opportunities, collaboration, and concrete scientific contributions. 🤓 Learn more about our courses: https://lnkd.in/gaEhbVHz 🎓 After you complete our course, continue as an Impact Scholar: https://lnkd.in/gWtywZXi 📬 Stay in the loop: https://lnkd.in/gvhYizCc #DeepLearning #ComputationalNeuroscience #ImpactScholars #Neuromatch #NeuromatchAcademy