Testimonials¶
Here is some feedback we got from the neuroscience community on various occasions. On this page it is grouped by its origin (i.e. research institutions, research software projects, individual laboratories and researchers). Alternatively, you can read testimonials related to specific topics:
Research Institutions¶
NeuroDebian is an effective solution to support a heterogeneous working environment. […] NeuroDebian is useful also for education purpose.
—– [2011-06-27] Director, Center for Mind/Brain sciences -CIMEC-, University of Trento, Trento, Italy
[…] software for neuroimage processing evolves rapidly and heterogeneously. It is a challenge for research organizations to remain current […] In this context we have begun to use the NeuroDebian repository […] We hope that this service will continue with an expanded scope […]
—– [2010-09-16] Director, Integrated Brain Imaging Center, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA
The approach taken with NeuroDebian is plainly the most appropriate approach to software distribution for the dominant platform in brain image analysis, and I have great confidence that this project will be a major asset to the neuroscience community in facilitating the distribution of stable software, improving the reliability and replicability of analyses, and in helping to improve software development practices.
—– [2010-09-08] Core Director, Data Processing Facility, Center for Functional Neuroimaging, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
NeuroDebian provides an excellent platform for software distribution […]
—– [2010-08-31] Director of the Center for Computational Imaging, Vanderbilt University Institute of Image Science, Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Having common software stacks makes sharing much easier, potentially (and silently) saving enormous amounts of money and effort and dramatically increasing efficiently and productivity in not one, but many labs. NeuroDebian is of particular utility in these regards.
—– [2010-09-07] Hamilton Institute, NUI Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland
I think that the idea of a common platform that supports a broad range of computational needs for neuroscientists is wonderful, and I am very impressed with the work that you have done so far in the NeuroDebian project.
—– [2010-08-31] Director, Imaging Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, Texas, USA
[NeuroDebian is] extremely useful in providing state of the art solutions to numerous standard problems encountered in the analysis of our complex data.
—– [2010-09-08] Head of the Parietal research group at Neurospin, Gif sur Yvette, France
NeuroDebian project made our library available to an unprecedented number of users […] as a system administrator, I rely on NeuroDebian for setting up and keeping up-to-date the software installed on the numerous clients and servers used by more than 150 scientists
—– [2010-09-02] IT system administrator, Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Berlin, Germany
Developing informatics infrastructure often involves building complex systems that require interaction between existing components such as software and atlases. NeuroDebian makes it trivial to manage the components of these systems, freeing me to focus on the novel and important aspects of my work.
—– [2013-02-06] Vice President for Neuroinformatics at Neuromorphometrics, Inc; University of Massachusetts Medical School
Research Software Projects¶
The NeuroDebian team taught me a great deal about how to systematize software development for reliable dissemination […] This speaks very highly of the deep skillset and commitment to user support represented in the NeuroDebian project, which will have high impact on the field and help standardize both the analysis and the interpretation of neuroimaging data.
—– [2010-09-16] Research Assistant Professor of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA
[…] your team are ideally placed to make this system work. I have worked with Yaroslav Halchenko and Michael Hanke. […] Their record on working together as a team, and individually, is easy to find, and speaks for itself. Their demonstrated combination of seemingly inexhaustible energy, openness and skill has been of enormous benefit to our own project and community.
—– [2010-09-02] Specialist researcher, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, USA
[…] we have benefited from the NeuroDebian team through their mentoring and direct efforts to improve the DMTCP software for wider distribution.
—– [2011-06-21] College of Computer and Information Science, Northeastern University, Boston, USA
We are currently preparing our first software-release in NeuroDebian and found it to be easy and straight-forward with a great support.
—– [2011-06-30] OpenWalnut project, Image and Signal Processing Group, Institute of Computer Science, University of Leipzig, Germany
Having FreeSurfer integrated into the Debian operating system by the NeuroDebian team would have enormous benefits for us, and for the thousands of users of FreeSurfer across the world.
—– [2010-09-10] Director, Computational Core at Martinos Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, Massachusetts, USA
The Debian project provides the scientific community with a truly universal operating system. The breadth and quality of its community-driven development and technical support is superior to many other available commercial alternatives. It provides a sound basis for the open science movement.
—– [2011-06-21] Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
In creating a source repository for distribution of common neuroimaging tools, NeuroDebian has filled a gaping void. It is an incredibly useful resource that we have been relying on at MIT for installation of software.
—– [2011-06-13] Research scientist, Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
[ […] The] only way to conduct reliable and reproducible science is to use open source software […]. NeuroDebian is by far the most advanced undertaking for such a scientific approach in the neuroscience community.
—– [2010-09-17] Psignifit and pyoptical developer, Modellierung Kognitiver Prozesse, Technische Universität, Berlin, Germany
[…] distributing the software via NeuroDebian generates valuable feedback which is indispensable for the development of free software. When working with the NeuroDebian team in the past, I have found their members to be very cooperative, target-oriented and responsive.
—– [2010-09-02] Post-doctoral researcher, Medical Physics Group, Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University Hospital Jena, Jena, Germany
We find the approach taken by NeuroDebian and the progress it made so far very pleasant and promising. […] The NeuroDebian team helped us to improve the quality of our software and of some of our processes by review, constructive suggestions and even software patches. The availability of the NeuroDebian Virtual Machine was instrumental for fast porting of the Psychtoolbox to a 64 bit Linux environment.
—– [2011-06-21] Dipl. Inf., Psychtoolbox lead developer, Department for Cognitive and Computational Psychophysics, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, Germany
It [NeuroDebian] has been and continues to be of great value in all of our projects […]
—– [2010-09-13] Lipsia lead developer, Department of Neurophysics, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
The dinifti tool was one of the first to appear in Debian and ever since it’s inclusion in the distribution, I have received invaluable feedback from the Debian community
—– [2010-09-01] Manager Information Systems, Center for Brain Imaging, New York University, New York City, USA
The NeuroDebian team has helped me to make my software (OpenSesame) available to the wider public in a much more professional fashion than I would have been able to do for myself.
—– [2011-07-29] OpenSesame lead developer, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
I am constantly aware that software packaging and supporting user needs on diverse platforms represents a severe burden for developers. The NeuroDebian software platform addresses these problems for a good fraction of production environments in the field, while contributing to research reproducibility through software standardization.
—– [2010-09-09] Post-doctoral researcher, Brain Mind Institute, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
Having such a group of experts [NeuroDebian developers] that search for open-source software solutions, refine them and then make them trivially easy for users to install and try out is of absolutely invaluable benefit to the research community and to the funding bodies that would, otherwise, be paying much larger sums in commercial software licensing fees.
—– [2010-09-06] School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Their [NeuroDebian developers] commitment to strongly tested, validated and documented tools for computational-based research in neuroscience is exemplary, and we owe them a great debt of gratitude for the contributions they have already made […]
—– [2010-09-08] IPython developer, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, USA
NeuroDebian is playing a key role in the creation of an ``eco-system’’ of open-source solutions for neuroscience […] The standards and practices disseminated by the NeuroDebian project allowed me to start using this tool [PsychoPy] efficiently and rapidly and to contribute back to the project within a few months.
—– [2010-09-15] NiTime developer, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, USA
[…] NeuroDebian will undoubtedly have a large impact on the quality of neuroscience research, both directly and indirectly, by making almost every known software package related to neuroscience work available in a stable and secure environment and broadening the standard set of techniques researchers can employ.
—– [2010-09-16] Department of Psychology, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, USA
Since 2007 we completely rely on the NeuroDebian project to provide users of the Debian/Ubuntu platform with FSL software packages and corresponding technical support. […] we have received a continuous stream of bug fixes and improvements that have been developed by members of the Debian community. […] we were able to benefit from work of people that would not otherwise contribute to the development of FSL – without any additional investment of my lab, but solely due to FSL’s presence in the Debian archive.
—– [2010-09-01] Associate Director, Centre for Functional Magnetic, Resonance Imaging of the Brain University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
The availability of a common platform [NeuroDebian] for many different neuroimaging software solutions makes it much easier to compare solutions and pick the tool of choice for a given research problem.
—– [2010-09-01] Parietal project, INRIA, Neurospin research center, Gif sur Yvette, France
Dr. Halchenko’s statement “Discover http://neuro.debian.net and be happy” may sound a bit like a sales pitch, but it is rather good advice. We have been experimenting with the rapid instantiation of computational environments containing neuroimaging tools from NITRC, and the NeuroDebian repository makes installing and updating the tools through apt-related package managers rather trivial.
—– [2011-09-22] Technical Lead of the NITRC project Source: NITRC forum: http://www.nitrc.org/forum/message.php?msg_id=5013
For proper software packaging and distribution, the NeuroDebian project provides professional expertise and infrastructure.
—– [2011-06-06] Source: The Connectome Viewer Toolkit, Front. Neuroinform. 5:3. doi: 10.3389/fninf.2011.00003
As a system administrator, I support the efforts of a number of researchers who use fMRI analysis software. I was overjoyed to find the NeuroDebian repository, a one-stop shop for nearly every software package the researchers use. The work of the NeuroDebian Team greatly simplifies the task of providing our researchers the best software available, and I consider the repository a vital part of my professional life. As a maintainer on the MRIConvert project, I find that NeuroDebian provides a valuable venue for dissemination of our software. It would not be possible to reach the same wide audience without the NeuroDebian repository.
—– [2013-02-06] Lewis Center for Neuroimaging, University of Oregon, MRIConvert/mcverter build master and developer
Neurodebian is the best solution for researchers in neuroscience. Everybody should have experienced wasting so much time in just setting up software. With Neurodebian repository, you can easily setup many useful software packages and focus on your research. I recommend this repository to everyone who is interested in using Linux in neuroscience.
—– [2013-02-06] University of Tsukuba
We use NeuroDebian on a daily basis as it provides a stable and versioned software base for analysis. This is critical as it allows us to maintain data provenance, something that is often sorely lacking. Our collaborators who don’t quite have their heads around Linux yet are pointed to the NeuroDebian Virtual Machine, it allows them to run an identical analysis environment to us regardless of where they are or operating system.
—– [2013-02-06] Center for Advanced Imaging, University of Queensland, Australia
NITRC-CE, or the NITRC Computational Environment, on the Amazon Marketplace wouldn’t have happened as quickly and thus cost effectively without leveraging NeuroDebian’s good works. We appreciate their critical contribution to the neuroimaging compute community.
—– [2013-02-06] PMP, nitrc.org
For any neuroscientist that relies on open-source software, NeuroDebian is the single most important resource.
—– [2013-02-06] Aix-Marseille université, Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive
With NeuroDebian we can utilize thousands of tools, providing the foundation for our research. On the other hand, we can provide our tools to a large community easily.
—– [2013-02-11] OpenWalnut project, Image and Signal Processing Group, Institute of Computer Science, University of Leipzig, Germany
Thanks to NeuroDebian I now have to spend my time thinking hard about what to do with the tools, rather than leisurely installing them and tracking dependencies.
—– [2013-02-06] Siemens Corporate Research
It is great to have NeuroDebian as a platform to bring our visualization system OpenWalnut to a broad audience together with the large variety of related data analysis tools available in NeuroDebian.
—– [2013-02-19] OpenWalnut project, Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB), Germany
Individual Laboratories and Researchers¶
I have been using NeuroDebian for my work on multivariate classification of fMRI data […] It is of great value, because I have access to both Windows and Debian OS on my laptop, where I do all my analysis.
—– [2011-06-15] Image Sciences Institute, University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands
I am a heavy user of NeuroDebian-Virtual Machine on Windows 64-bit platform.
—– [2011-06-15] Associate Professor, Graduate School of Decision Science and Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan
It [NeuroDebian] is of great advantage for the management of the computers of the lab because NeuroDebian allows to reduce the system administration costs.
—– [2010-09-15] Neuroinformatics Laboratory, Center for Mind/Brain sciences -CIMEC-, University of Trento, Trento, Italy
Both the software and online support forums provided by NeuroDebian have been invaluable for my machine-learning studies of fMRI data.
—– [2010-09-08] Ph.D. student, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA
[…] I couldn’t believe my great luck when after just an hour or so I had a complete [NeuroDebian] system running and my research was back on track. […] Your service and support are critical to keeping researchers effectively working on their research, rather than on maintenance issues that negatively affect our productivity. […] I was working on versions of AFNI and FSL that were several generations behind […] Now I will always be up-to-date. […] Because I am now running a virtual machine, I can keep my data files [with me].
—– [2011-06-18] Department of Counseling, Education Psychology, and Special Education, Michigan State University, USA
I am writing this letter in support of the NeuroDebian team, whose efforts at producing high-quality free, open-source software have been invaluable to my graduate research.
—– [2010-09-16] Ph.D. student, Department of Brain and Cognitive Science Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
[NeuroDebian is] an extremely time saving solution
—– [2010-09-06] Lecturer, Cognitive Psychology Department, Eötvös University, Hungary
[…] NeuroDebian allows both researchers and the public to easily replicate the entire experimental procedure, a feature rendered difficult or often impossible by proprietary software packages that most scientists rely on nowadays. I have been increasingly using NeuroDebian in a Virtual Machine because Linux operating systems are not supported by the university. […] Moreover, powered by NeuroDebian’s openness, I see a reason to publish the full code of our experimental and analysis scripts. [NeuroDebian] makes the goal of open science finally viable.
—– [2011-06-18] Ph.D. student, Laboratories of Biological and Experimental Psychology, K. U. Leuven, Belgium
[We] find it [NeuroDebian] to be the best tool for running classifiers on our neuroimaging data (EEG and MEG).
—– [2010-09-09] Center for Mind/Brain sciences -CIMEC-, University of Trento, Trento, Italy
NeuroDebian has a major impact within our laboratory as quick and rich research environment for all our projects.
—– [2010-09-09] Center for Information Technology, Bruno Kessler Foundation, Trento, Italy
We consider NeuroDebian to be a truly commendable effort and an invaluable asset for the neuroimaging community.
—– [2010-09-07] Dipartimento di Scienze Biomediche, Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy
We have been relying on NeuroDebian […] for our work on Adult ADHD neuroimaging and find it to be very useful.
—– [2011-06-14] Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Department of Psychiatry of Federal University of Rio Grande do Su, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil
Neuroscience software […] easily available at a single point with hastle free installation and easy updating.
—– [2011-06-15] Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health And Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore, India
It [NeuroDebian] is and will continue to be invaluable in our multiple NIH-funded research projects. NeuroDebian nicely takes care of the burden of software deployment and management on my computers and allows me to concentrate on the imaging analysis itself […]
—– [2010-09-15] Post-doctoral researcher, Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Our research would be considerably more difficult without necessary software solutions transparently provided and supported by the NeuroDebian project.
—– [2010-09-15] Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy III, University of Ulm, Germany
[NeuroDebian] makes my lectures on neuroimaging much more convenient and ``hands-on’’ by deploying virtual machines on student’s laptops […] a quick, elegant and cost-free solution, enabling students to work on real fMRI data in no time.
—– [2011-06-15] Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience, Dept. of Neurology, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, Germany
brilliant! as promised, all problems are [on their way to being] solved. (well, at least in so far as neuroscience is concerned :) very cool and as pointed out, NeuroDebian lets you try out all the cool toys of neuroscience research with a very straightforward ease of use (esp. with the virtual machine). very nice…keep up the good work!
—– [2010-05-05] Source: NITRC NeuroDebian reviews
[…] Best part for me is that I can run it in a VM without having to worry about replacing my native OS.
—– [2010-05-05] Source: NITRC NeuroDebian reviews
[…] those wonderful tools in Debian Neuro […] make my life as a researcher who also maintains a bunch of Debian boxes so much easier.
—– [2010-10-11] Departments of Neurology and Radiology, Palacky University School of Medicine and University Hospital, Olomouc, Czech Republic
I am a dedicated R user … and have a Windows box. But this afternoon I (finally) downloaded and installed NeuroDebian and the VirtualBox, ran AFNI, and generated the files I needed, all within about an hour and a half. […] not bad, considering that I know essentially no Linux/Unix. So here’s a big “thanks!” :)
—– [2012-03-15] Department of Psychology, Washington University
Neurodebian provides us with a consitent way of sotware packaging and upgrades, eliminating tedious compiles and home-brew setups, while seamlessly integrating with the Debian distribution. Excellent and very valuable work, saving costs and difficult to spot errors. High five Michael, Yaroslav and team! Keep them packages coming!
—– [2013-02-06] University Medical Center Utrecht
Since I started using a NeuroDebian virtual machine on win64 months ago I am relying more and more on its diverse tools, from population-specific template creation to pipelining the analysis of fMRI, DTI and morphology studies. There is a great chance I will end up working exclusively with NeuroDebian!
—– [2013-02-06] Neuroimaging Research Group, Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Deu, Barcelona, Spain
Without NeuroDebian we would have wasted precious time for deploying software, and we wouldn’t have tested so many software tools.
—– [2013-02-07] Cortical Networks, Max-Planck-Institute for neurological research, Cologne, Germany
NeuroDebian not only helped our lab focus on research and producing results with FOSS, it has also made it much easier to maintain version control, facilitating data portability and reproducibility. I see this as the most important current project working towards transparent neuroscientific methods with clear and reproducible results.
—– [2013-02-19] York University, Toronto Canada
Neurodebian provides not only a platform for neuroscience applications that makes maintenance of collections of tools easy. The staff also gives a very quick support in case of - very rare - problems. Altogether Neurodebian saves a lot of time and money.
—– [2013-02-22] Bender Institute of Neuroimaging, University of Giessen, Germany