Brain Data Group (UoN)

Congrats to @linqizhao.bsky.social for receiving an Honorable Mention for his first full paper at #chi2025

Work Hard, Play Harder: Intense Games Enable Recovery from High Mental Workload Tasks
Linqi Zhao, Michael Knierim, Max L. Wilson, Patrick Dickinson & Horia A. Maior
dl.acm.org/doi/full/10....

We’re excited to be nominated for our work taking brain scanners to the public! We scanned 4000 brains over the last year at science events for children, families, politicians, and policy makers. See: brain-data-uon.gitlab.io/exhibition/

#instituteawards #WeAreUoN

We had Michael Knierim and Alex Mädche visiting from KIT last week. Planning our next phase of collaboration, and doing the Festival of Science and Curiosity. #uonbrainteam #brains #science #outreach

The brain team had some fun today playing with thermal cameras! We’re hoping to get back onto the facial temperature changes we saw with high mental workload before covid.

New paper on 🤖 🧠 📺 📊 at Scientific Reports:
Performance metrics outperform physiological indicators in robotic teleoperation workload assessment
doi.org/10.1038/s415...

In collaboration with the CHART research group and @horiamaior.bsky.social @drmaxlwilson.bsky.social and others

Message me if you are interesting in a #PhD, especially if in #brain #health #tracking, #fatigue, #stress, mental workload, personal informatics, #recovery and gaming.

Theres 10 #PhD places going in Computer Science, Nottingham UK. Contact Max or Horia if you want to study #brains #fnirs #neurotech and #health

brain-data-uon.gitlab.io

www.nottingham.ac.uk/computerscie...

Brain team undergrads playing with live #fnirs brain data and 3D printing. 🧠 #braindatagroup #braindata #3dprinting

You can start to find our team on bluesky. Or check out @uonbrainteam on Instagram and TikTok

go.bsky.app/yQMPJC

What says “come learn about brains” more than 70 bright pink polo shirts, and a selfie board saying “serving major brain rizzzz!” ?

The Brain Data Group made it to Hawaii to lead a workshop on Future Brain Tracking and Cognitive Personal Informatics at CHI2024

We tested version 2 of the public exhibition at Nottinghams Festival of Science and Curiosity 2024. Pretty fun. Basic brand feel though.

Another social! Linqi joined the team. Johann was off to Cambridge.

We were accepted to do the @royalsociety.bsky.social Summer Science Exhibition 2024. This was prototyping how we might do it! Luckily we had 8 months to make it better… luckily a trip to London for some training helped!

In 2023 we applied to run a public engagement exhibition stand at the @royalsociety.bsky.social - this was part of our video submission.

Another brain team social! Callum, Jwan, Huimin and our summer intern Amber had joined the team by then.

#fNIRS UK 2023 - we had a good brain team showing!

Oh look. Our first time playing with a Mendi! (consumer #fnirs). Casually ordering a coffee while wearing a brain scanner around campus.

We managed another social after Covid! The Brain Data Group grew! This included Alex, Adrian, and Elizabeth who joined as postdocs just before Covid. Serena who was towards the end of the PhD, and Johann just beginning. Horia had become an Ass Prof too.

2022 we proposed the next 20 years timeline for consumer neurotechnology, as Cognitive Personal Informatics, drawing a parallel to physical activity tracking. #cogPI

2022 we could also start to imagine a future living with personal brain scanners, thanks to new AI tools. Thanks Dall-E!

CHI2022 we published our “Lived Experiences of Mental Workload in Everyday Life” paper where we introduced the Mental Workload Cycle - one of our steps towards imagining Cognitive Personal Informatics

2021 was a bit shy on photos too. BUT we did launch the brain team website and get MERCH! See the website: brain-data-uon.gitlab.io

Thanks for the new followers! We are setting up as @uonbrainteam on Bluesky, TikTok, and Instagram if you want to see information, videos, and pictures!

Strangely not many photos of the team in 2020. Just new lab safety precautions and a chocolate brain with #fNIRS heat map painted on

In 2019, we began another grant focused on Alzheimer’s, putting #fNIRS on people in VR, who experiencing cognitive decline. We headed off to Copenhagen to see Brain+ with our new @artinis.bsky.social Brite.

Starting 2018, the brain team was part of the DigiTOP project. During the next four years we would put #fNIRS on people in different manufacturing environments.

Throwback to #fNIRS 2018 conference in Japan

2018 we showcased our brain-controlled movie. It used consumer EEG to track interest in different characters and adapt the movie in the background. The debut was at Sheffield DocFest - see more: www.youtube.com/watch?v=23wV...

In 2017 our research went properly mobile #fNIRS with @artinis.bsky.social Octamon - completely untethered over Bluetooth was perfect for our needs. We still use this low form factor product.