This year鈥檚 edition of the Irv and Helga Cooper Foundation Open Science Prizes at The Neuro, organised by the Tanenbaum Open Science Institute, was exceptional in every way.
With a record number of applications from across the globe, both for the international and the trainee prizes, the competition highlighted the growing reach and impact of Open Science in neuroscience. This year鈥檚 applicants came from 18 countries across five continents, reflecting the worldwide reach of the prizes and demonstrating a shared commitment to openness and accessibility in science. Three outstanding projects will be awarded the Prizes and receive critical support.
We extend our sincere thanks to all applicants for the exceptional quality of their submissions, and to the selection committee for undertaking the challenging task of selecting the winners among so many outstanding projects.
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Main Prize Winner: The BrainGlobe Initiative
As datasets become larger, more complex and multi-modal, existing analysis and visualisation tools can be limiting - many being tied to a single species or brain atlas, which makes the combination of results difficult. The , led by Adam Tyson, Alessandro Felder and Igor Tatarnikov, addresses this challenge by building open, interoperable, and general-purpose software libraries. Based at the at University College London, this initiative enables whole-brain research across species and modalities, enabling collaborations and interdisciplinarity. Their impact is undeniable: software packages have been downloaded over 3 million times since development began in 2020.
But what sets this initiative apart is its community-driven approach. By lowering barriers to entry and fostering contributions from diverse backgrounds, it has created a thriving ecosystem that now counts over 125 contributors from more than 70 institutions worldwide.
The initiative goes far beyond code, offering tutorials, courses, documentation, open datasets, and a support forum, creating real spaces for conversation and making it accessible at every level.
Igor Tatarnikov from the BrainGlobe Initiative will be giving a special lecture during the Prizes ceremony on November 10 titled "The BrainGlobe initiative - open-source tools and community building for computational neuroanatomy鈥�.
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International Trainee Prize Winner: Ju-Chi Yu
Ju-Chi Yu, Postdoctoral Fellow at the , spearheaded the first Open Brain Science workshops in Taiwan and transformed them into a lasting, active community. Her efforts are especially significant given the limited prior representation of Open Science, particularly in brain science, in Taiwan.
Through initiatives like , she created tailored training opportunities that empowered researchers and trainees to engage with global Open Science practices and community. As chair of the Special Interest Group鈥檚 Open Science Room at the Organization of Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) conference, she also connected Taiwanese scientists with international networks. OHBM is indeed the world鈥檚 largest neuroimaging community.
The Open Science Room is a dedicated space within the OHBM Annual meeting for community-driven, Open Science related discussions and is an important driver of Open Science worldwide, putting the field of Neuroimaging at the forefront of Open Science.
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Canadian Trainee Prize Winner: Confidence Raymond
Confidence Raymond, PhD candidate at The Neuro (黄片荔枝视频), co-founded the , for Sprint AI Training for African Medical Imaging Knowledge Translation. This initiative tackles the important disparities in medical imaging research: while African countries contribute less than 1% of global brain imaging publications, Africa faces one of the fastest-growing rates in neurological disease.
In only three years, SPARK Academy has trained over 600 clinicians and researchers across 36 African and Southeast Asian countries, with many trainees returning as peer mentors. All training materials, analysis tools, and AI models are openly available. Raymond鈥檚 work demonstrates how Open Science can drive health equity and inspire scalable models for capacity-building in under-resourced settings.
The outreach of both trainee awardees鈥� initiatives is outstanding, bringing Open Science to corners of the world that would benefit from it the most, or where it has yet to become part of common research practice. They will both present their projects during the Prizes ceremony on November 10.
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Runner-Up Trainee Prizes
Two additional trainee finalists stood out for their contributions:
Eneko Urunuela (University of Calgary), for developing widely adopted open-source neuroimaging tools (, ) and fostering community engagement through tutorial materials, workshops, and users meetings.
Golia Shafiei (University of Pennsylvania), for leading the , an open developmental dataset integrating neuroimaging and psychiatric phenotyping data from over 6,000 participants across three continents.
This year鈥檚 winners show how Open Science can reach places it hadn鈥檛 before鈥攚hether by connecting under-represented regions to international networks or by opening up new possibilities for research that spans different species and techniques 鈥� improving the overall research ecosystem.
Join us on November 10 to celebrate their achievements during the Prizes ceremony!
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