Intro to Neural Engineering

This week I'm kicking off my new graduate course "Intro to Neural Engineering". The goal is to introduce students to the concepts of neural engineering including both the scope of the field as well as some of the specific techniques. Since I've never taught this course before (indeed, I don't even think its been taught elsewhere all that much) it should be a real seat of the pants experience.

I'm going to have students treat this like a glorified journal club - every week one or two students will be responsible for guiding a discussion on a reading. Readings will come from textbooks, peer-review literature, and possibly even general-interest non-fiction. Additionally, students are going to have to roll up their sleeves and actually try implementing some of the techniques we'll be reading about. This could involve coding up a particular mathematical technique or building a circuit to do data acquisition of some sort.

One of my main challenges will be the range of students. Of the 11 students registered, I have two PhD students in Electrical Engineering, about six MS students in EE, two neuroscience students, and a physical therapy student. Thats a bit of a mixed bag! Figuring out how to keep all these abilities interested will be a real challenge...