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Nick Souter

@nicksouter.bsky.social
297 followers 117 following 34 posts

Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University of Sussex, studying ways of measuring the carbon footprint of fMRI data preprocessing and analysis 🌱🧠

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Nick Souter @nicksouter.bsky.social · 22/11/2025
And another thank you to the whole @bhdonostia.bsky.social organising team for inviting me to speak about the carbon footprint of neuroimaging computing! (I think the subtitles shown on the screen here were from people all over the room, not me just mumbling incoherently)
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Nick Souter @nicksouter.bsky.social · 22/11/2025
A massive thank you to the team who actually did the hard work of putting this together: MONIKA UTROSA CLÉMENTINE LÉVY-FIDEL FÁBIO LOBATO GABRIEL PIŠVEJC Everything we developed is available open source on GitHub: github.com/NickESouter/...
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Nick Souter @nicksouter.bsky.social · 22/11/2025
This week I attended my first ever hackathon with @bhdonostia.bsky.social! We put together a functioning dashboard to estimate the carbon footprint of MRI data collection 🧠 You can access the neuro-impact-calculator here: nicksouter.shinyapps.io/neuro-impact... (Not yet optimised for phones) 🧵
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Nick Souter @nicksouter.bsky.social · 08/02/2024
9. Use existing data Running analysis on previously collected and preprocessed data is a great way to test hypotheses without using additional energy to preprocess it yourself. We provide a table describing different open access datasets.
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Nick Souter @nicksouter.bsky.social · 08/02/2024
5. Tidy up "junk" files Energy is needed to store and backup data. you can reduce your footprint by deleting files you don't need. For #fMRIPrep, junk files make up to 96% of total size. Our tool fMRIPrepCleanup, automatically finds/removes this data: github.com/NickESouter/...
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Nick Souter @nicksouter.bsky.social · 08/02/2024
4b. Time and location matter You can also consider choosing cloud computing services based in countries/regions with lower average carbon intensity. 2022 data for countries and US states ⬇️
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Nick Souter @nicksouter.bsky.social · 08/02/2024
4a. Time and location matter The carbon intensity of electricity peaks at busy times and drops overnight and at the weekend. By scheduling preprocessing/analysis to run at low intensity times, you can use the same amount of energy while emitting less carbon. Data for the UK ⬇️
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Nick Souter @nicksouter.bsky.social · 17/11/2023
Last week we ran the first 'Environmental impacts of computing (EIC) in health & life sciences research' workshop, at the Wellcome Trust in London 🌱 🖥️ You can now find recordings of all our spreakers on YouTube! www.youtube.com/playlist?lis... We discussed a number of topics... 🧵
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Nick Souter @nicksouter.bsky.social · 05/10/2023
On November 7th, we're hosting the first 'Environmental impacts of computing in health & life sciences research' workshop, at the Wellcome Trust in London! eicworkshop.info Come along to learn more about the carbon footprint of your research computing, and how it can be reduced 🌱
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Nick Souter @nicksouter.bsky.social · 03/10/2023
Here's the preprint for my final PhD paper, and my first fMRI study! 🧠 We found that dissociable default mode network (DMN) subnetworks support retrieval of contextual and emotional associations, seperately from processing of retrieval demands www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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