In 2007 I suggested and, together with my friends and year-mates in the program, Andrew Fink, Brikha Shrestha and Baktash Babadi, organized the first Columbia bootcamp course for the incoming students to the neurobiology and behavior program. We were greatly helped and supervised by Larry Abbott, who has been the head of the organization committee since then.

The success of year 2007 was solidified and the course expanded in 2008 by the great team of the first year (2007) students Joe Schumacher, Cate Jensen, Irene Ballagh, Wanying Zhang, Greg Wayne and Burcin Ikiz. The team which organized the first boot camp helped to organize its second instance.

In 2009, the now second year students continued the tradition with the great organization of boot camp and introduction of hands-on experience days (theory (Xaq Pitkow) and aplysia lab (Sam Schacher))! The team had Joe Schumacher, Tim Requarth, Zev Rosen, Christine Constantinople, Ana Calabrese, Karina Scalise, Arielle Torres, Alexis Hill and Chris Peck on board.

Along with organizing the boot camp I gave lectures on microscopy, together with Baktash in 2007 and by myself in 2008 and 2009. Please find materials relevant to the lectures below.