/BN, Duppé/ The organizers are particularly pleased to report a much wider international outreach than in previous years. With 63 countries, the conference revealed a much wider international diversity than last year’s conference onsite in Berlin.

The Bernstein Conference counts as one of the most renown conferences in the field of computational neuroscience. Traditionally, its attraction lies in the choice of international speakers, who are very reputable scientists in the field. Besides the 11 invited speakers, eight contributed talks were selected by a double-blind review process; the conference featured 280 Poster from many different subject areas.

Born out of necessity, the online format offered new opportunities for scientific presentation, which the program chairs Elad Schneidmann (Jerusalem, Israel) and Julijana Gjeorgjieva (Frankfurt, Germany) seized immediately. Upon their initiative, the poster presentations were offered in multimedia format and a unique poster raffle had been organized. It was through such out of the box thinking that scientific exchange was greatly facilitated. The conference came to life especially at the posters, during the satellite workshops and the (virtual) coffee breaks – above all through the intensive discussions of the participants.

The tenor amongst organizers and participants alike was that the Bernstein Conference 2020 more than lived up to its reputation as a great forum for scientific exchange. The online format posed no barrier to discussions. On the contrary, many participants had the true conference feeling. The organizers received much praise for a successful event, in particular as it facilitated participation around the entire globe.