November 2025

General Updates

  • Draft 2026 Strategic Priorities & Town Hall — We have been collaboratively developing  Neuromatch’s 2026 Strategic Priorities  over the past several months. The current draft synthesises organisation-wide priorities with those aligned to our three pillars (Academy, Career Development, and Field Building) and remains a working document. We warmly encourage you to review the draft and leave comments, questions, or suggestions by Wednesday 10 December.
  • We also invite you to join our  Neuromatch Town Hall  on 14 January 2026 (16:00–17:30 UTC), where we will share our strategic vision for the year ahead and hold space for open discussion and community feedback.
  • IBRO Partnership — We are delighted to announce that Neuromatch and the International Brain Research Organisation (IBRO) have formalised a new partnership. IBRO is the world’s largest global network in brain research, representing over 90 international, regional, and national neuroscience societies and reaching tens of thousands of researchers across more than 100 countries. Through this partnership, we hope to work together to raise awareness of Neuromatch’s programmes, expand access to our training and career development opportunities, and increase our global impact by connecting with a broader and more diverse audience of neuroscientists worldwide.
  • Scholar Nexus Development — As part of our open-publishing programme, we have recruited a part-time programmer, Paolo Marzolo, to implement the first version of a new publication system designed to further democratise science by building inclusive, community-controlled publishing infrastructure. Paolo will be developing a fully functioning front-end journal to host micro-publications from the Impact Scholars Program, providing an important proof-of-concept that we will use for future fundraising toward a more comprehensive, stand-alone publishing platform. This work also enables us to responsibly spend down the restricted funds allocated to Scholar Nexus while strengthening synergies with our Impact Scholars Programme.
  • Mindmatch — Over the past year, Neuromatch received pilot funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to refine our researcher-matching algorithms, building on the tools originally developed for our early online conferences. In parallel, we delivered two small contracts for Wellcome to provide interdisciplinary matching for upcoming funding opportunities. As part of the Sloan work, we built a lightweight prototype of a self-serve matching app (“ Mindmatch ”) to explore whether automated, real-time matching could support broader collaboration and networking across research fields. We are now seeking community input on whether and how this prototype should evolve. Konstantine (Neuromatch's Lead Full Stack Engineer) will reach out to the wider Neuromatch community this week to share the prototype and gather feedback on potential use cases and future development.
  • JupyterCon 2025 — Neuromatch attended JupyterCon 2025 in San Diego, where we connected with core contributors of the Jupyter project and leading data science professionals. We gained valuable insights into the latest advancements in the Jupyter ecosystem and best practices in interactive computing. We are excited to use what we have learned to improve and modernize our courseware for an even better learning experience.
  • Neuromatch at Society for Neuroscience 2025 — Neuromatch hosted a booth at SfN in San Diego, where we met hundreds of early-career researchers interested in our courses and programmes. It was especially meaningful to meet so many of our alumni, teaching assistants, mentors, partners, and co-founders — all of whom shared their enthusiasm and appreciation for Neuromatch! It was an inspiring reminder of the strength and impact of this community, and I am incredibly proud to be part of it.

Academy

  • Neuromatch Ambassadors Program — We’ve officially launched the  Neuromatch Ambassadors Program , led by two co-chairs Peter Ohue and Tolulope Gbayisomore and supported by 20+ volunteer Ambassadors worldwide. Ambassadors are helping answer questions from potential students, share firsthand experiences, and organize local or language-specific info sessions to strengthen community engagement.
  • Open Academy Leadership Roles — Neuromatch Academy and Climatematch Academy are recruiting volunteers for several leadership positions across our 2026 courses, including roles in Comp Neuro, Deep Learning, NeuroAI, and Climatematch, as well as shared department positions (e.g., Professional Development, Tech, Student Experience, Instruction, and Communications). Most roles require around four hours per week, with some variation. You can explore all open positions and full descriptions here:  https://neuromatch.io/volunteer/ . If you have questions please reach out directly to Courtney.

Impact Scholars Program

  • 2025–26 Cohort — The 2025–26 Impact Scholars Program officially launched this month. We received 76 Group Applications and, following a highly competitive review process, selected 20 Project Groups: 11 in Computational Neuroscience, 3 in Deep Learning, 3 in NeuroAI, and 3 in Climatematch Academy. The cohort represents scholars from 25 countries (36% from HICs, 64% from LMICs) and ranges from undergraduates and master’s students to early-stage PhD researchers. The teams are supported by 19 supervisors across our global network.
  • Partner Projects — A major new feature this year is the introduction of Partner Projects, providing scholars with access to unique, high-impact datasets from external organisations. This year’s partners include: the International Brain Laboratory (brain-wide Neuropixels decision-making dataset), Meta (surface EMG and gesture-sequence data for EMG-to-pose modelling), and the Michael J. Fox Foundation (Fox Insight and PPMI longitudinal Parkinson’s disease datasets).

MEXA Research Accelerator

  • In-Person Forum (3–4 Nov, London) — We convened representatives from all 40 global teams for a two-day forum, bringing together ~100 delegates including staff from Neuromatch, Wellcome, and partner organisations. Teams showcased their progress, exchanged feedback, and refined their final submissions. Key themes included the rapid evolution of the field, data sensitivity and transparency, bias in training data, clarity on end-users, and regulatory pathways. The breadth of applications and depth of lived-experience integration were particularly notable, and momentum across the cohort remains very strong!
  • Program Impact & Feedback — Online workshops throughout the Accelerator were consistently well attended and highly rated, demonstrating strong demand for this model and Neuromatch’s ability to deliver high-quality, engaging programming. At the in-person forum, teams expressed strong satisfaction with mentorship, technical support, and peer learning. They also highlighted areas for future development, including ethics, lived-experience integration, translation, regulation, and commercialisation. A final survey will be circulated after proposal submission to capture additional reflections.
  • Future Funding & Opportunities — Neuromatch has requested additional funding from Wellcome to continue supporting the cohort over the next two years, maximising translation, impact, and sustainability. We are also exploring a  Coefficient Giving  proposal focused on capacity building in “AI Safety in Mental Health,” which may include a MEXA early-career fellowship programme and in-person workshop convening.

Financial Snapshot

  • Financial Runway — As of 31 October 2025, Neuromatch Inc. held $899,481 in the bank. Based on current projections, and not accounting for pending or future fundraising, Neuromatch will exhaust available and committed funds in March 2027. This provides a conservative financial runway of approximately 15 months.
  • Meta Partnership — Meta will renew their support for Neuromatch in 2026 at a level of $20,000. This year, we were pleased to introduce an Impact Scholars partner project with Meta in which scholars are working with surface EMG datasets to explore movement classification and pose estimation. We are grateful for this continued partnership.
  • Protocol Labs Support — Neuromatch has secured a $100,000 grant from Protocol Labs to support our Computational Neuroscience and NeuroAI courses and sustain the Impact Scholars Program. We are very excited by this new partnership, and grateful to Sean Escola — one of Neuromatch’s co-founders — for helping make this possible.
  • HHMI Support — Thanks to Carsen Stringer’s leadership, HHMI has renewed its support for Neuromatch for 2026 with a $10,000 contribution. We are deeply grateful for this continued partnership and recognition of our impact.
  • 2026 Partnerships — We are actively pursuing potential 2026 corporate sponsorships with Google DeepMind, Hugging Face, Anthropic, and Blackrock Neurotech. If you have suggestions or warm connections to other organisations that may be interested in supporting Neuromatch’s mission, please let us know.
  • Gatsby Charitable Foundation Renewal — Bradley met with Allison Simmons from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation at SfN to receive feedback on our recent grant application. Due to budget constraints, their interest is focused primarily on supporting the Impact Scholars Program. They have encouraged us to work towards their June 2026 Board of Trustees deadline (indicating a more competitive round) where we expect to seek support of approximately $250,000 per year for four years. We will keep the community updated as this progresses.
  • Giving Tuesday Pilot — This year, Neuromatch will run its first-ever Giving Tuesday campaign as a small-scale pilot. Giving Tuesday is a global day of charitable giving that mobilises millions of people each year to support organisations they believe in. Look out for our email and social posts, and please consider forwarding them to your networks. Every $1 directly supports and sustains our impactful educational and research programmes.