October 2026

October 2026

Volunteer Engagement

Earlier this year, we sent out our annual Volunteer Engagement Survey. You can see the de-identified results in a dashboard  here .
A few takeaways:
  • Volunteers stick around because of social connections and a commitment to our mission.
  • Volunteers would like an opportunity to contribute more new ideas - this is something we've been directly working on in the Volunteer Engagement Working Group — stay tuned!
  • Although most volunteers aren't more engaged due to time, there are still quite a few who identify unclear tasks or tasks that don't fit their interests as a barrier. This is definitely an area of improvement we'll be working on.
  • These Monthly Updates were a direct response to last year's survey. We hope they've been helpful at share the info you're interested in more regularly.
  • We'll keep looking into our new data and how it can help us improve!

Hiring & Staffing Updates

  • Green Circle APPLICATION OPEN! Computational Behaviour, Curriculum Specialist - We are hiring for two Curriculum Specialists for our newest course!! Come be a part of something awesome. Details here:  https://neuromatch.io/careers/ 
  • Rolling applications, priority deadline 8 November
  • Academy Coordinator - Party Popper We're excited to welcome Anna Ysabella (Anya) Habana as our new Academy Coordinator! She will join us part-time in November and will be full-time starting 1 December. Anya is a Comp Neuro alum, recently earned a master's in Cognitive Sciences, and has experience managing complex projects in nonprofits. Anya also has lots of data analysis experience and will help us make our Academy data more usable! Please give her a warm welcome when she joins Slack!
  • NeuroAI for High School, Curriculum Specialist - We are excited to welcome back Alex Murphy, former NeuroAI Curriculum Specialist, to help with our NeuroAI for High School adaptation. Alex will start part-time the first week of November.
  • NeuroAI for High School, Teacher Fellow - We are currently interviewing for the Teacher Fellow role; we hope to have someone selected by the end of next week.

Academy updates

Welcome Ambassadors!

We welcomed our new Ambassador co-chairs, Afeez Oladokun and Celestine Ilo, along with our advisors, Peter Ohue and Tululope Oladele. We’ve also onboarded in a new cohort of Ambassadors who are already sharing Neuromatch with their local and online communities. You can meet them all on the  Ambassadors page of our website . Curious about the program? Join us in the #a-ambassadors channel on Slack.

Academy Chairs Onboarding

  • We are currently onboarding our domain-specific department chairs! Check out  Courtney's Slack message  for more info.
  • We will open the rest of our shared department chairs in November. Keep an eye out on Slack.

Computational Behaviour Course Update

  • Check out the new course's draft syllabus and give some feedback  here .
  •  Intro to the course 
  •  Draft syllabus 

Python for Computational Science Week

 Python Week  is a free, self-paced week for anyone who wants to learn Python, with tutorials and a global community cheering them on. It’s a great first step for anyone preparing for our courses and wants to build their coding confidence.
We’ve published a paper on what we learned from our first Python Week in 2026, sharing who joined, why they came, and what support they want next.  Read it here!  Congratulations to the many volunteers who contributed to this!
Python Week is coming back! We’ve announced the dates: 30 January to 7 February. If you'd like to help with the planning and evaluation, please join us in the #a-python-week channel on Slack.

Introducing the Neuromatch Course Kit

Until now, there was no shared toolkit for building Neuromatch courses. Each course had to assemble its own tools and processes. Over the past few months we've built one: a single, shared foundation that course creators can adopt instead of starting from scratch. This is what it can do today:
  • Built on MyST: courses are written in MyST, an open-source format for scientific documents. Authors write plain text once, and the kit turns it into a website and into notebooks.
  • Made for Neuromatch teaching: the kit extends MyST with custom building blocks for how Neuromatch courses are taught, such as videos, slides, exercises with hidden solutions and explanations, datasets and feedback forms. Authors add them with simple tags, and they look and behave the same in every course.
  • Scrollytelling: lessons can unfold as readers scroll. Explanations appear alongside live code and figures that update step by step, so learners follow an idea as it builds.
  • Fast setup: one command creates a ready-to-go starter course.
  • Interactive tutorials: tutorials run in the browser, in Colab and in Kaggle. Authors can attach small datasets and images, and they work the same way everywhere.
  • Consistent look: courses share Neuromatch branding, including fonts, logos and colours. Courses can adjust the colours to suit their own identity, and interactive pages follow the reader's light or dark mode.
  • Easier review: every proposed change to a course gets its own preview website, so reviewers can see the result before it goes live.
  • Tutorials and projects: both get the same features.
  • Reliable by design: automated checks and a streamlined release process mean improvements reach course teams quickly and with fewer surprises.
The kit is now at an early but usable stage. Next, we'll bring more courses onto it and gather feedback from the teams using it.

Career Development & Field Building updates

MEXA

Neuromatch is currently supporting 14 interdisciplinary teams from around the world developing projects that use generative AI to address anxiety, depression and psychosis. We welcome you to check out our updated  MEXA webpage  to learn more about the teams. This month, we also launched our Research Spotlight Series, where participating teams present their projects and exchange questions, feedback, and ideas with their peers, fostering collaboration across the cohort.

AI Sentience Scholars (AISS) Program

We are supporting  10 AI Sentience Scholars  in the AISS program. Recently, two of our AISS mentors and three Scholars had the opportunity to  meet in person at a conference . Our open and free seminar and workshop series has also been a hit, with two more sessions coming up that you are welcome to join in November.  Register here!  

Impact Scholars Program

Matching emails have been sent to all  22 teams  of 92 Scholars and 22 Supervisors Party Popper Thanks to all the volunteer reviewers for evaluating the  scholar team proposals  and  supervisor applications . The ISP Discord community is now set up for the new cohort and is already buzzing with introductions! Rieke Schäfer and Ohad Zivan are returning this year to help out as organizers on Discord - thank you! If you have prior experience managing Neuromatch Discord servers and are interested in helping out with the ISP server, please join the party by responding to  this thread . The program kicks off on 2–3 November, with research mentoring and a fantastic series of  workshops coming up  - please register for the ones that are of interest to you. We couldn’t be more excited to welcome the new ISP cohort!

Conferences

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.  If you will be attending, please fill out this short form  and we'll let you know about our happy hour, co-hosted with Community for Rigor.

Fundraising

Fundraising Infrastructure:
  • Black Fox Global: We are working with Black Fox Global to strengthen our communications and fundraising infrastructure. We have been working with the team to refine core messaging and clarify funding priorities for their prospect research.
Newly Confirmed Funding:
  • Dana pilot proposal on NeuroAI & Society: The Dana Foundation Board of Directors has approved this proposal in full ($183,400)! In collaboration with the Institute of Neuroethics (IoNx), GESDA, and Georgia Tech’s INNS, we’ll pilot training for early-career researchers worldwide on the ethical, societal, and governance challenges of neuroAI through an open-access course module, three hackathons and workshops, and a pilot Ethics, Science & Society stream within our Impact Scholars program.
Pending Applications:
  • Longview Philanthropy: Digital Minds RFP for an expansion of the AI Sentience Scholars Program — this is under review.
In Conversation/Drafting:
  • Computational Behaviour Course:
  • Kavli Foundation: We met with Kavli to explore potential support, although opportunities aligned with their Open Data in Neuroscience work appear limited at present. We will explore potential synergies with their Neurobiology and Changing Ecosystems initiative, potentially through an ISP project.
  • Wellcome – Connectomics: We discussed opportunities to develop Connectomics programming focused on global access, capacity building, and working with existing datasets. Further discussions with Wellcome around funding, geographic priorities, and possible collaboration on data democratization and research training are planned for early next year.
  • Templeton World Charity Foundation (TWCF): We are meeting with the team to explore potential synergies and support opportunities for the AI Sentience Scholars program.
  • New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS): We discussed opportunities to collaborate on professional development events in NeuroAI.
  • We’re also actively cultivating several funder relationships, including, Protocol Labs, Allen Institute, and the Simons Foundation.

Financial Snapshot

  • Financial Runway: As of 30 September 2026, Neuromatch Inc. held $941,438 in the bank. Based on current projections and not accounting for pending or future fundraising, Neuromatch will exhaust available and committed funds in August 2028. This provides a conservative financial runway of approximately 22 months.