Beginner Track
Designed for participants who are new to MRI or want a stronger foundation in a specific technical area.
- Lectures and guided tutorials
- Hands-on practical exercises
- Core concepts, tools, and essential skills
Seminars & Hackathon
portableMRI NerdFest-2
A hands-on event to help people design, build, and improve portable MRI hardware while connecting engineers, researchers, mentors, and students.
Visions
Hardware training
- Train people to design and build MRI hardware, not just theories.
- Brainstorm strategies for portable MRI challenges.
Access & impact
- Promote portable MRI for resource-limited and/or point-of-care settings.
- Enhance MRI accessibility by lowering barriers worldwide.
Global community
- Build a global community of engineers and researchers who share the same vision.
We offer
- Expert seminars, training, workshops, and poster exhibitions.
- Mentorship from world-class experts and hardware specialists.
- Lab access, equipment, tools, and workspace for your team.
Your role
- Learn
- Form or join a team
- Contribute to a working MRI scanner
Themes
Building together, solving a big picture. Each team focuses on a critical subsystem. Together, all combine to form a complete portable MRI.
How Does It Work?
portableMRI NerdFest-2 is built around eight technical themes, each representing a key subsystem of an open-source portable MRI system. Participants join a theme, work in small teams, and contribute toward a final integrated demonstration.
1
Choose a theme
Participants state their preferred technical themes. Assignments prioritize first choices, then second choices, while keeping team sizes balanced.
2
Join a track
Each theme has Beginner and Advanced tracks, matched to participants' background, confidence, and prior MRI or engineering experience.
3
Build in teams
Each track may contain multiple teams of about five participants. Teams stay within their theme throughout the event.
4
Integrate the system
Teams develop, test, and validate their subsystem so it can connect with the other themes for the Day 4 system demonstration.
Advanced Track
Designed for participants with relevant knowledge or experience who want to work directly on harder engineering problems.
- Subsystem design, optimization, construction, and testing
- Open-source improvements and new technical ideas
- Close collaboration with mentors and integration teams
5Members per team
2Categories (Beginners and Experienced)
200Participants (4 days)
300Day 1 attendees
15Mentors
15Facilitators