Nencki Open Lab Workshop - From keypoints to behavior: pose estimation and behavior analysis, Oct 14th-17th 2025, Cantanhede, Portugal.

[Mateusz Kostecki]

Hello, 

We are happy to announce our next workshop – From keypoints to behavior. Hands-on pose estimation and behavior analysis!

This practical workshop will guide you step by step through the process of pose estimation and unsupervised behavior analysis, focusing on two powerful tools: DeepLabCut and Keypoint-MoSeq. Many researchers use pose estimation tools but struggle to get consistent, high-quality results or move beyond tracking into real behavioral insights. This workshop is designed to close that gap.

The workshop is intended for young researchers, including Master’s and PhD students, as well as postdocs and established scientists who want to sharpen their practical understanding of state-of-the-art behavioral analysis tools.

Prior experience with experimental data and a basic understanding of Python are recommended, but not strictly required—motivated participants with a willingness to learn are very welcome.

What will you learn?

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Confidently navigate the DeepLabCut workflow (via GUI and code)
• Annotate data properly, select the right model backbone, train your model, and evaluate its performance
• Analyze your videos and tune tracking in multi-animal projects
• Preprocess and structure your data for advanced behavioral analysis
• Implement Keypoint-MoSeq to discover and quantify behavioral motifs from DLC-derived keypoints

We encourage participants to bring video recordings from their own experiments—these can be used during practical sessions to kickstart your own analysis projects.

When and Where?

The workshop will happen over 4 days from October 14th to 17th 2025 in Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology – University of Coimbra in Cantanhede, Portugal.

Tutors

• Konrad Danielewski (data scientist, Nencki Institute)
• Flavia Riccardi (researcher, CNC-UC)

Registration

The course is limited to 16 participants.

For participants residing locally and not needing hotel accommodation:

Registration fee is 150€ and it includes: 

• participation in the workshop from October 14 to October 17, 2025
• course materials
• lunches on days of the workshop (dinners not included)
• coffee-breaks
  

For participants coming from outside the area:

Registration fee is 300€ and it includes:

• participation in the workshop from October 14 to October 17, 2025;
• course material
• lunches on days of the workshop (dinners not included)
• coffee-breaks
• accommodation (shared 2-person rooms) at B&B HOTEL Cantanhede close to the venue, for the nights of 13-14-15-16th October 2025 (breakfast included).

The registration form can be found here  - https://nenckiopenlab.org/keypoints/

The application deadline is August 30.

Best,

Mateusz Kostecki