Lasers4EU

Lasers4EU Training | Hands-on Course on MINDLAB: Manipulating and Investigating Neural Dynamics for Learning and Ageing in the Brain, 13-17 July 2026
2026-07-13 - 2026-07-17 | Castelldefels, Castelldefels, Barcelona, Spain
The core faculty of the ICFO-MINDLAB, a think tank working jointly towards a transdisciplinary understanding of the brain, offers a school to introduce cutting edge technologies to study neuroscience at the molecular, cellular and systems level to students in a combination of lectures and hands-on experience leading to group projects.
What is MINDLAB?
MINDLAB stands for “Manipulating and Investigating Neural Dynamics for Learning and Ageing in the Brain” and is an interdisciplinary creative playground rooted squarely in academic rigor, comprising of research groups from ICFO and beyond. We focus on advancing fundamental knowledge on how the mind emerges from the behavior of individual molecules, neurons and brain networks but also creating and commercializing transformational future technologies with outstanding potential to impact our society for good.
Hence, this course will expose participants to the state-of-the-art of photonics-based technologies tailored to monitor a hierarchy of scales in the study of the brain: i.e. from single molecules up to the whole organism.
The MINDLAB faculty includes world leading experts in their fields. The expertise of the core faculty is complemented by a diverse set of affiliated adjunct faculty from various research centres in Barcelona but also through clinical and corporate partners.
This year’s school coincide with the arrival of ICFO’s Summer Fellows, a group of highly motivated master-level or engineering students in their final years of study, who join ICFO research groups for three-month internships (July-September)
Hands-on sessions
Participants will engage in lab sessions focused on the latest photonics technologies. Each lab session will provide participants with an opportunity to work directly with advanced equipment and gain valuable practical skills.
The sessions will take place in the following labs:

Super resolution Light microscopy and Nanoscopy
Neurophotonics and Mechanical Systems Biology
Medical Optics
Photon Harvesting in Plants and Biomolecules
Single Molecules Biophotonics
