BIC Members are Leading the Way

BIC Members play leadership roles in various scientific initiatives, stimulating collaborations on the provincial, national and international scenes. For example, J. Doyon was the founding director (2008-2019) of the Quebec Bioimaging Network (QBIN).

The BIC is also a hub for major programs such as:

• The Canadian Open Neuroscience Platform (A. Evans, J.-B. Poline)
• The Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration and Aging, the Global Brain Consortium (A. Evans)

BIC members also act as leaders for:

• The Organization for Human Brain Mapping, Working Group on Brain Network Nomenclature (N. Spreng)
• The International League Against Epilepsy Neuroimaging Task Force (B. Bernhardt)
• The Canadian Center on Substance Use and Addiction (M. Leyton)
• The Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada (D. Arnold)
• The International Epilepsy Neuroimaging Data Exchange Initiative and the International Multicentric Artificial Intelligence in Epilepsy Initiative (A. & N. Bernasconi)
• The International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (J.-B. Poline, A. Evans)

From Academic and Clinical Research to Industry

Several BIC members have founded successful spin-off companies implicating the acquisition and analysis of multimodal neuroimaging data, including:

• NeuroRx (D. Arnold)
• Biospective (A. Evans, B. Bedell)
• "True-Positive Medical Devices" (L. Collins, S. Duchesne)

These companies create jobs for highly skilled staff in technology and software development applied to imaging devices and clinical trials.

A Highly Productive Environment

Faculty members of the BIC show an exceptional level of scientific productivity. In the last 5 years, they have published 1,397 scientific papers in leading scientific journals and received more than $104.5M in research funding. In addition, BIC member A. Evans has led a Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF) grant initiative, which was awarded to McGill to support a $84M structuring project (Healthy Brain for Healthy Lives) in neuroscience.

A Broad Impact on Society

The societal impact of the BIC stems from the very nature of the research performed at the Centre, which is at the convergence of clinical and cognitive neuroscience and cutting-edge biomedical engineering and large-scale neuroinformatics. An example is in the development of new imaging biomarkers for a wide spectrum of neurological and neuropsychiatric syndromes including neurodegenerative diseases (for example, Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s), Autistic Spectrum Disorders, and Multiple Sclerosis.