Neural NoiseThe g.tec BCI & Neurotechnology Spring School is an annual 10-day intensive program organized by g.tec medical engineering GmbH, running April 20–29, 2026 (CEST, Vienna). Following its 2025 edition that drew more than 90,000 participants from 140 countries, the 2026 program spans ten thematic days covering EEG signal acquisition, invasive BCI and ECoG, AI-driven decoding, EEG–TMS perturbational neuroscience, clinical neurorehabilitation, neurophysiological biomarkers, and high-gamma mapping in functional neurosurgery.1 The school is delivered in a hybrid format combining online lectures, live on-site demonstrations, global live-viewing hubs, and an international hackathon phase, making it one of the largest participatory BCI education events in the world.1
Each day of the program is organized around a focused clinical or scientific theme. Early days establish methodological foundations—signal quality, reproducibility, and recording architectures—before progressing to applied topics such as closed-loop neuromodulation, speech decoding, neuroprosthetics, and stroke rehabilitation with exoskeletons and FES.1 The speaker roster draws from leading institutions including Stanford University, Columbia University, EPFL, Mayo Clinic, Harvard University, and the National Center for Adaptive Neurotechnologies, alongside industry engineers from g.tec.1 Days 6 and 7 are dedicated to the BR41N.IO Global Hackathon, during which distributed international teams build BCI applications using available paradigms (motor imagery, P300, SSVEP, ECoG) with real-time mentorship and a competitive awards ceremony.1
For the BCI community, the Spring School functions as both a training resource and a coordination node. It lowers the barrier to hands-on BCI experimentation—particularly for participants without on-site laboratory access—by providing structured access to hardware demonstrations, open datasets, Python pipelines, and Unity/VR integration workflows.1 The hackathon component has historically produced deployable BCI prototypes and serves as a recruitment and networking venue for the global neurotech ecosystem. Credit-granting partnerships with affiliated universities allow graduate students to earn academic credit for participation.1