BU Research Blog

Last week saw the great success of the CuttingGardens2023 conference (16-19 October 2023). This was a globally distributed and hybrid conference on cutting-edge EEG/MEG methods with 800+ attendees. The event was globally coordinated by the CuttingEEG Association, and locally hosted by 21 gardens in 15 countries across Europe, Asia, and North and South Americas. Bournemouth University hosted a local Bournemouth Garden as part of this global event. This was chaired by Dr Xun He (also a member of the global organising committee) and the Multimodal Immersive NEuro-sensing (MINE) Research Cluster.

The conference had a series of plenary (global) talks on topics of theoretical advances, real-time processing and classification, reproducible analyses, and deep neural networks. These plenary talks were globally broadcasted to all gardens. Our Bournemouth Garden hosted a plenary speaker (Hubert Banville from Meta) on deep neural networks in the afternoon of Thursday, 19 October. Our local discussion on the plenary talks was so lively and critical, that very often our questions were among the top-voted online. Our attendees also enjoyed a thought-provoking, interactive, and friendly local programme. Following BU’s research expertise, they got a chance to visit the MINE Research Cluster and the EEG-eye tracking co-registration labs, and greatly advanced their knowledge and skills in these research fields through talks and tutorials. Our sponsors, ANT Neuro UK (EEG equipment producer) and TG0 (tactile sensing devices producer), also showed great support and delivered excellent demonstrations showcasing the most recent technical advancement.

The full support from the Faculty of Science and Technology (represented by Prof Christos Gatzidis) was extraordinarily reassuring, without which the conference would not have taken place. FST’s Deputy Dean, Dr Carly Stewart, also delivered the welcome note for the conference.

Our great success could not have been possible without the very enthusiastic and dedicated work of the best team. They truly deserve a loud round of applause! They are:

Bournemouth Garden organising committee (over 15 months from July 2022 to October 2023): Xun He (Chair), Ellen Seiss, Andrew Hanson, Marina Kilintari, Ruijie Wang, Federica Degno, and Biao Zeng (University of South Wales, visiting fellow of BU)

Local speakers: Federica Degno, Andrew Hanson, Otto Loberg, Géza Gergely Ambrus, Xun He

MINE Research Cluster visit hosts: Fred Charles, Ellen Seiss, Andrew Hanson, Xun He

EEG-eye tracking co-registration lab visit hosts: Federica Degno, Otto Loberg

Broadcasting support: Elliott Roch

Assistants: Damla Kuleli, Toby Denholm-Smith

Some team members and speakers in the summer of 2023 (from left to right: Andrew Hanson, Ellen Seiss, Xun He, Federica Degno, Ruijie Wang, Marina Kilintari, Otto Loberg)