ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neuroinform.
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fninf.2025.1608900
This article is part of the Research TopicOpen and FAIR Data in NeuroscienceView all articles
Breaking barriers: Broadening neuroscience education via cloud platforms and course-based undergraduate research
Provisionally accepted
- 1Lawrence Technological University, Southfield, United States
- 2The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, United States
- 3Oakland University, Rochester, New York, United States
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
This study demonstrates the effectiveness of integrating cloud computing platforms with Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) to broaden access to neuroscience education. Over four consecutive spring semesters (2021-2024), a total of 42 undergraduate students at Lawrence Technological University participated in computational neuroscience CUREs using brainlife.io, a cloud-computing platform. Students conducted anatomical and functional brain imaging analyses on openly available datasets, testing original hypotheses about brain structure variations. The program evolved from initial data processing to hypothesis-driven research exploring the influence of age, gender, and pathology on brain structures. By combining open science and big data within a user-friendly cloud environment, the CURE model provided hands-on, problem-based learning to students with limited prior knowledge. This approach addressed key limitations of traditional undergraduate research experiences, including scalability, early exposure, and inclusivity. Students consistently worked with MRI datasets, focusing on volumetric analysis of brain structures, and developed scientific communication skills by presenting findings at annual research days. The success of this program demonstrates its potential to democratize neuroscience education, enabling advanced research without extensive laboratory facilities or prior experience, and promoting original undergraduate research using real-world datasets.
Keywords: CURE (course-based undergraduate research experience), brainlife.io, sMRI, human brain volumetry, Project based active learning, human brain parcellation, open-access neuroscience databases, broadening participation in computing
Received: 09 Apr 2025; Accepted: 16 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Delogu, Aspinall, Ray, Heinsfeld, Victory and Pestilli. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Franco Delogu, Lawrence Technological University, Southfield, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.