The program featured lectures, seminars and courses on scientific topics of the CRC, methods workshops and seminars, as well as courses for training of transferable skills. Visiting scientists contributed to the lectures, seminars and journal clubs offered.

The lecture series of the CRC over the entire funding period included 126 lectures of national and international speakers. In addition to this lecture series, training on relevant methods was offered through the CRC “Methods Academy”, a series of seminars and training workshops that aimed at enhancing data analysis skills and at driving further development of analysis methods. A total of 101 Methods Academy events took place over the three funding periods. In this series, hands-on courses on Matlab programming, courses in FieldTrip analyses, as well as courses in EEG/MEG signal analysis and non-invasive brain stimulation techniques have been offered. In the second funding phase, we have expanded our curriculum by developing an online course (SPOC, „Small Private Online Course“) with introductory lectures on network neuroscience which went online in summer 2019. This course provided an introduction into the core themes to all new students joining the CRC, but has since been open for general admission of interested students and not restricted to CRC members.

Training for both doctoral candidates and postdoctoral researchers has also been offered through workshops, conferences and other scientific meetings. The scientific program of the CRC comprised 10 working retreats for all members that held in all three funding periods, where all groups presented their data and interactions between the projects were discussed and further developed. In addition, 7 retreats for the doctoral students were organized by the students themselves where progress reports were held and lectures on relevant background topics were offered. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the retreats were held as online events in 2020 and 2021. The CRC organized 15 smaller workshops on analysis, modulation and modeling of networks, on open science, on the challenges addressed in the CRC and on many other aspects relevant to strategic planning of the projects. In addition, we organized 12 large international symposia, including the Brain Connectivity Workshop 2014, a satellite symposium to the FENS Forum 2018 in Berlin, several symposia on network science and three science and gender equality symposia, to name just a few examples. PhD students and postdocs were actively involved in the planning and organization of these meetings and had the opportunity to meet distinguished scientists in the field. Other sources of support and training included the participation of students and postdocs in EU-funded summer schools on topics related to the theme of the CRC. For example, events organized by the EU-funded Marie-Curie-Network “European School of Network Neuroscience” (euSNN; coordinator A. Engel) were open for junior researchers of the CRC. As early as possible, junior researchers were supported in presenting their results at international conferences such as the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, the Biannual FENS Meeting, or the annual Human Brain Mapping Meeting.