The Pre-COSYNE Brainhack 2026

Overview

The Pre-COSYNE Brainhack is a lively event that brings together people who are passionate about open science, open-source tools, and collaboration around computational and systems neuroscience. The hackathon provides an opportunity for people from different institutions to work together on projects of shared interest and learn from each other.

The 2026 edition of the Pre-COSYNE Brainhack will center on reproducibility in interpreting data within systems neuroscience, drawing inspiration from CON²PHYS — CONceptual CONsistency in electroPHYSiology. During the Brainhack, participants will analyze the same electrophysiology dataset and attempt to answer multiple-choice questions that reflect real research challenges. This setup aims to reveal how researchers deal with conceptual ambiguity and how their analytical choices affect outcomes. The event fosters collaboration in teams of 3-4, integrating varied expertise and code practices to enhance reproducibility in analyses. Read more about the concept here.

In addition to hands-on work, Research Software Engineers (RSEs) will provide talks about current tools and practices in systems neuroscience, offering insights into making analyses more reproducible through cleaner code, standard data layouts, and effective testing practices.

This hackathon is heavily inspired by the OHBM Hackathon, BrainHack, and EBRAINS / HBP / NeuralEnsemble CodeJam events. Pre-COSYNE Brainhack is not an official part of the COSYNE conference.

Dates & Location

The hackathon runs from March 10–11, 2026 — the two days preceding the COSYNE conference. It will be held at the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal.

Registration

To register for the hackathon, please fill out our application form. Deadline for registration is Sunday, January 18th 2026. The results of the applications will be announced by the end of January 2026.

If you cannot attend but would like to be notified of future events, please join for our mailing list.

Sponsors

Pre-COSYNE Brainhack 2026 is sponsored by the International Brain Lab and the Simons Foundation.

Organizers

Pre-COSYNE Brainhack 2026 is organized by Deying Song, Elnaz Alikarami, Florian Rau, Gaëlle Chapuis, Guillaume Viejo, Mattia Chini, Irina Pochinok, Olivier Winter, and Ryan Ly.