The board approved a formal Cost of Living Adjustment policy , capped at 5% (accounting for current ~3% inflation), with flexibility to go higher if warranted. The board retains the ability to pause COLA in years where NM's financial position doesn't support it. Soft-money PI salaries are only adjusted if the COLA is budgeted into their grant.
We're kicking off an engagement with Black Fox Global next week to build out our communications and fundraising infrastructure. This includes dedicated comms and advancement support, cold outreach on our behalf, and upskilling for team members involved in fundraising. The goal is to build durable infrastructure that supports fundraising capacity. Bradley and Joana will both be working with the Black Fox team closely over the next 7 months.
We're also actively cultivating several funder relationships: Wellcome (connectomics), Protocol Labs, Allen Institute, and continued conversations with Simons Foundation as our current grant winds down. For the Impact Scholars program, we’ve secured financial support from the Michael J. Fox Foundation and in-kind support from the Open Brain Institute.
Courtney provided a general Academy update, including this year's financials, certificate numbers, new initiatives, and big wins. More data is coming from our survey analysis.
We're continuing to build board capacity, particularly by looking for people with backgrounds in financial operations for a specific Treasurer role, and people with science philanthropy or fundraising networks. A board recruitment subcommittee with Konrad, Ella, Brad, and Bradley was formed to coordinate outreach.
The board also discussed ways to increase transparency and community input into the Board's role and decisions. We will regularly be sharing the agenda for our Quarterly Board Meetings, and also commit to sharing a summary of discussion and decisions from each meeting (like this one!) that are not otherwise confidential. We’ll continue to gauge interest from the community on other forms of engaging with the Board and organizational decision-making.
Ella, Megan, and Dan, who were all able to join for our in-person Core Team Retreat, shared a little bit about their experience and the value of spending time with the Neuromatch staff. They highlighted how helpful this was in getting a full picture of the organization, surfacing some disconnects between the Board and staff, and the value of making time to connect with staff. We’ll be making a more intentional effort to bring together staff and Board together during the year.
During the retreat, several board members and staff brought up that they didn’t feel our current mission statement reflects the work and focus of Neuromatch. The full Board agreed. This will be a deliberate process over the next ~6 months to update the mission is parallel with creating a theory of change for the organization.
We are supporting 10 AI Sentience Scholars in the program. This month, the scholars came together online for their midpoint check-in meetings, where they presented their progress and shared where they are with their projects with the entire cohort. Our open and free seminar series has also been a hit, with two more sessions coming up that you are welcome to join - one from Robert Long and one from Michael J Tarr. Register today!
Neuromatch is currently supporting 14 interdisciplinary teams from around the world working on projects with generative AI for anxiety, depression and psychosis. We welcome you to check out our updated MEXA webpage to learn more about the teams. This month, we also created a dedicated Slack workspace for the teams and began meeting with them for Theory of Change workshops. These workshops challenge teams to reflect on their pathways to impact, provide a shared framework for impact planning, support project reflection throughout the award, and help us identify and respond to teams’ needs.
A busy time for the Impact Scholars Program! With the help of a team of dedicated volunteer reviewers we have selected out 21 final teams with 2+ reviews for all proposals! We launched a new page on the website under Career Development highlighting Impact Scholars Program Supervisors and we are currently recruiting Supervisors for projects . We have 11 volunteers who will be reviewing the Supervisor applications on a rolling basis. In November, Neuromatch will have a booth at the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) . We're looking forward to connecting with our community in person and introducing our programs to new audiences — mark your calendars and stay tuned for more details as each event approaches! Final reminder to take our annual volunteer survey for 2026. In addition, this year, we will be mailing a small token of our appreciation to all volunteers who provide us with their mailing address (whether you fill out the survey or not!).
We are excited to have Afeez Oladokun and Celestine Ilo as our 2027 Ambassadors Co-Chairs! Over the next few weeks, we'll welcome our new cohort of Ambassadors!
The Course Creation Committee has begun meeting weekly to start bringing the course outline to life. Over the next month, they will create course learning objectives and clear topics for each day. The next step will be sharing this with the community for feedback and reaching out to potential Day Leads. We will be transitioning to more open channels as the planning progresses!
We are excited to have Gunnar Blohm as our Course Director, Kate Bonnen as our Curriculum Chair, and Alejandro Tabas as our Project Co-Chair with an additional support person to be added! In addition, the full Committee includes:
- Ann Kennedy
- Jorge Otero-Millan
- Konrad Kording
- John Butler
- Kate Bonnen
- Ella Batty
- Mengsen Zhang
- Lisa-Marie Vortmann
- Srikanth Ramaswamy
- Alejandro Tabas
- Vishnu Sreekumar
If you are interested in getting involved in this work, please see #a-27-behaviour-course-creation on Slack.
This month we are focused on hiring our Curriculum Specialist for NeuroAI for High School and the Teaching Fellow that will be working along side them.
- Manisha has officially stepped into her full-time Sr. Manager role with Neuromatch as of 14 Sept! In October, she will split her time between completing our data analysis and working with ISP. November 1st, she will fully dedicate her time to her new role.
- Interviews are happening for our new Academy Program Coordinator role, we hope to have someone onboarding by the end of October.
- We’re kicking off a 7-month engagement with Black Fox Global to strengthen our communications and fundraising infrastructure. This includes dedicated communications and advancement support, cold outreach on our behalf, and upskilling for team members involved in fundraising to build more durable fundraising capacity.
- We’ve signed a contract for a pilot supporting 2 Impact Scholars Program (ISP) projects from this year’s cohort, with $16,000 in funding. The projects will work with PPMI datasets, providing an exciting opportunity to explore how partnerships like this can bring additional funding and resources to ISP.
- : After some discussions with Dana for feedback on this proposal, Dana have been in touch this week to let us know they'll be recommending Neuromatch's Ethics and Society proposal for inclusion in the October Board of Directors meeting! They may not be able to fund the full amount ($183,400) this year, but should be able to get close. We'll have a further update from them soon.
- Digital Minds RFP for an expansion of the AI Sentience Scholars Program — this is under review.
- In talks with senior leadership about regular funding support for the Academy and Impact Scholars program, and how to strengthen our partnership with Allen, including using more of Allen's data in our programming.
- We have reconnected with Kavli to explore potential support and opportunities to strengthen alignment with their Open Data in Neuroscience work. A call is now scheduled to discuss the program and potential areas for collaboration.
- We’re also actively cultivating several funder relationships, including (Connectomics), , , and the .
- As of 31 August 2026, Neuromatch Inc. held in the bank. Based on current projections and not accounting for pending or future fundraising, Neuromatch will exhaust available and committed funds in . This provides a conservative financial runway of approximately.