Scientific Organisation of Medical Students

As long-term partners in neuroscience outreach, the Scientific Organisation of Medical Students and the National Neuroscience Society of Romania organised a series of events for the 2018 Brain Awareness Week at Carol Davila University in Bucharest. The theme of these events was “Brain Technology – The quest for human enhancement”. We organised a variety of events for every taste, ranging from a FameLab competition, where students were encouraged to present a topic related to Brain Technology, thus, introducing the public to its importance, to a visit in the Neuroscience Laboratory at our faculty. Here, different techniques and experiments were presented by research assistants, the main attraction being a demo in which people had their own EEG recorded while immersed in virtual reality. Coming from a medical school, BAW could not lack a special neurology edition of our regular event, TIPS (Training with Interactive Presentations for Students). The last two days belonged to the Keynote conferences, held by Marius Leordeanu, Politehnica University and Ioan Opris, University Of Miami, as well as to the interactive lecture, conducted by Professor Leon Zagrean, from our university, and Catalin Dumitrescu, Politehnica University. They approached exciting topics such as the relationship between vision and language, the possibility of memory prostheses and recent technological advancements in a diverse array of fields. Our topic raised the interest of many curious people, making it accessible for a variety of people from all walks of life: medical students, artists, bioengineers, IT scientists etc. This way, we accomplished our purpose and the amplitude of the event exceeded our already high expectations.

After visiting the neuroscience laboratory at our faculty, highschool and university students expressed their intention to join the laboratory and engage into neuroscience research. Many students expressed their wish to apply for the International Summer School on Imaging for Medical Applications, recommended by Marius Leordeanu after his conference. The event had a great networking success, as connections were traced among people in diverse fields, making the ground for future collaborations.

While in the process of brainstorming for ideas, seeing what other partners have accomplished in the previous years was of great help, as it provided any necessary information. Also it is a great way of staying in touch with other BAW organisers around the globe. As for suggestions, considering the fact that usually every isolated BAW event has its own page and the main page may remain forgotten, maybe it would be a good idea that every individual page promotes the main page and vice versa.