Neuromatch Impact Scholars Program × MJFF: opportunities to work with Parkinson’s research datasets

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Hi everyone! We’re excited to share an opportunity for members of the MJFF Data Community of Practice to get involved with the next Neuromatch Impact Scholars Program (ISP).

The ISP is a team-based, part-time, mentored research program for early-career researchers. Over 6 months, scholar teams work on open computational research projects, supported by mentors, and produce openly shared research outputs such as micropublications, code, analyses, and research presentations.

For the upcoming cohort, we’re particularly excited to offer computational neuroscience projects using MJFF datasets, including PPMI and Fox Insight. Previous Impact Scholars have worked with the PPMI dataset, resulting in open research outputs, and we’re looking forward to building on that work with the next cohort.

We’re currently developing the project opportunities and would love to hear from the community:

:microscope: Research ideas: Are there research questions, analyses, or themes that you think would be particularly valuable for young scholars to explore using these datasets? Applications for this cohort close on September 3, so apologies for the relatively short window to share input. Even high-level suggestions would be very helpful.

:handshake: Mentorship: We’ll be recruiting supervisors/mentors for the projects that are selected, starting September 21, after the scholar selection process. If you might be interested in providing light-touch mentorship to an ISP team working with MJFF data, we’d be very happy to hear from you at that stage. There’s no need to commit now — we’re just hoping to identify people who might be interested.

You can find more information about the available datasets and potential projects here:

:backhand_index_pointing_right: Airtable - CN Partner Projects 2026

If you’re interested in sharing research ideas, potentially mentoring a team, or simply learning more about the program, please comment below or get in touch with me directly. We’d love to hear from you!

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Hi there! This looks like a really interesting and valuable program!

I would be interested in mentoring a group, if you have one looking at PPMI data. My particular experience is analysis and machine learning of the clinical and -omics data (separately and together). I contribute to the PIE and PIE-clean repositories for data cleaning and analysis of the PPMI data: perhaps one of the teams could use these tools as part of their analysis, and/or contribute new features and capabilities to the codebase? Let me know if you’d like to discuss some ideas in more detail!

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Hi Victoria! Wonderful, thanks so much for reaching out. Your experience sounds like a great fit. I’ll be in touch once we start recruiting mentors (mid September) and have a clearer picture of the projects and teams that could benefit from your expertise. Thanks again!

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Awesome, thank you! Looking forward to hearing more then!

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sounds like a very exciting initiative Joana! just to ask the annoying question but will participants be funded for their time by any chance?

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Hi, thanks! If you mean the scholars, unfortunately we’re not able to provide funding for their time. We provide compute resources, mentorship, and workshops as part of the program. The supervisors/mentors are compensated for their time, though, so if you were asking about the mentorship side, there is a little funding available for that.

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Thank you for sharing this great opportunity, @Joana.Guedes!

Tagging some potentially interested community members below; feel free to share with your networks or other interested parties.

@amirhussein.a @AngelaK @angelarempela @cissecheick81 @Charaiveti @DJeffries @dmarinme @jpmkane @jnaleway @Luca @Francisac @mattia.volta @Parker @Ollena5 @ranand @Yayoi_Sakaki @tsengh @togzhans @rpbiney @LLXavier

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Hello Joana,

I think I have a project that could be a good match for this program. I see the deadline is quite soon though. Would you be available soon for a quick chat? I am not sure how to send a direct message on this platform, so feel free to send an email directly to dan@ariadnebio.com to schedule.

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@Joana.Guedes this occurs to me after our call, but I wonder based on @ecebayram’s question whether there might be interest in considering some support for the scholars themselves beyond in-kind donations?

Maybe if not all, perhaps creating some additional acknowledgement or maybe a small prize for top project(s)? Or is that not really in the spirit of things?

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Yes, absolutely. Ideally, we would love to be able to provide some funding directly to the scholars themselves. In some of the other Scholar programs we run, when funding is available, we’re able to provide scholars with stipends as well as a small project budget to support their work. At the moment, that’s unfortunately not possible for the Impact Scholars program, but it is definitely something we’d like to work toward!

I really like the idea of a small prize for the top projects. It could be a nice way to recognize particularly strong or impactful work. I’d be very happy to think through what that could look like!

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Great, let’s plan to chat about it at our next check-in. Wondering maybe if there is interest that community members could help decide so the award is from peer researchers? Just a thought :slight_smile:!