Winter School "Ethics of Neuroscience and AI" 2025

Theoretical foundations, as well as practical and ethical aspects are addressed. Participants will benefit from a combination of lectures with group work and discussions, where they will put the learned content into practice.

We're happy to announce that our Winter School is full and registration is now closed.

If you would like to be placed on the waiting list, please write an email to graduateprograms(at)bccn-berlin(dot)de.

Scientific organizers: John-Dylan Haynes, Marten Kaas, and Thomas Schmidt.

The program can be found here.

The program booklet will also be available here later on.

Please note that this Winter School is an event which takes place in presence in Berlin.

Accommodation: We cannot organise accommodation for participants. Please make your own arrangements, see below for the venue address.

On Tuesday, Feb 25, the school offers two parallel tracks: The Philosophical Track focuses on theoretical aspects, meta-ethics and moral responsibility. The Empirical Track offers theoretical foundations as well as a number of practical ethical aspects in neuroscience, such as deep brain stimulation, brain death, artificial intelligence, and data protection.

Fees: The Winter School is free of cost but registration is necessary.

Venue: Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin, Philippstr. 13 Haus 6 & 4, 10115 Berlin

Certificates of Attendance: Certificates of attendance will be issued upon request for those who attend at least 4/5 days.

Certificates of Credit: External students can receive up to 3 ECTS for their participation in the Winter School if they attend in presence and fulfill the following criteria:
3 ECTS: attend the School, take part in the Group Work session and submit a 2-page essay.
2.5 ECTS: attend the School and take part in the Group Work, no essay.
0.5 ECTS: attend only the Good Scientific Practice (GSP) session.

If you would like to receive credit, please indicate that on the registration form.

Travel Awards: We are happy to inform you that, thanks to FENS & IBRO-PERC, we are able to provide 4 travel grants of 750€ for students (master or PhD) studying in Europe, outside of Germany, to attend the Winter School! Due to time limitations with respect to Visa processing times, we are unfortunately not able to offer travel awards to students who are not currently studying in Europe.

To apply for the travel grant:

• please fill out this form
• save the file with "YOUR_NAME Winter School Travel Stipend Application"
• email it to graduateprograms(at)bccn-berlin.de with the subject line "YOUR_NAME Winter School Travel Stipend Application"

The application deadline is January 27th, 9:00 CET.

After the deadline, the course organizers will select a subset of applicants and NENS will make the final decision. We will inform applications of the decision once we have the results.

The money will be transferred to the recipients once they have checked-in to our Winter School on the first day (Monday February 24th).

Organisation: Dirk Mende, Lisa Velenosi and Darko Komnenić

Contact: graduateprograms AT bccn-berlin.de

Additional information for Master's students of the program Computational Neuroscience:

The Winter School coincides with the compulsory module "Ethical Issues and Implications for Society" for first year BCCN Berlin Master's students. For complete module description see the program structure here. Master's students of the program Computational Neuroscience have to attend the empirical track as well as write an essay.

We are proud to receive support from FENS and IBRO-PERC every second year which enables us to continue to offer our Winter School "Ethics of Neuroscience and AI" free of charge to an international audience each year.

The Winter School is jointly organized by the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin, the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, and the Excellence Cluster Science of Intelligence.