OSNAP! I received an NIH Outstanding Scholars in Neuroscience Award This award makes my heart sing -- between college and PhD I spent a year researching at the NIMH, and loved every minute of the campus and community. Feels full circle to be honored by NIMH post-PhD!

Recent PhD Grad, or planning on defending soon? With current funding uncertainties, postdoc fellowships, often funded by private donations, can provide job stability in the coming years. I put together a short guide and list of fellowships I applied to 👇

Tragically beautiful article from @harvardmagazine.bsky.social about the absurdity of letting death machines into our cities, and how simple fixes can return "complete" streets to the people. Amsterdam and Copenhagen transformed, what's stopping Boston? www.harvardmagazine.com/2025/03/harv...

Making Roads Safer for Pedestrians and Cyclists | Harvard Magazine

Working to curb road deaths

harvardmagazine.com

In the vein of Women's History Month and International Women's Day, Nature published a number of fascinating women's health studies recently, including: Hormone cycle's effect on breast cancer treatment. Brain restructuring under pregnancy. X chromosome + brain aging. Links👇

1/ Our paper appeared in @Nature today! www.nature.com/articles/s41... w/ Fiete Lab and @khonamikail.bsky.social . Explains emergence of multiple grid cell modules, w/ excellent match to data! Novel mechanism for applying across vast systems from development to ecosystems. 🧵👇

Global modules robustly emerge from local interactions and smooth gradients - Nature

The principle of peak selection is described, by which local interactions and smooth gradients drive self-organization of discrete global modules.

nature.com

Are you a PhD student thinking about PostDoc options? Fellowships provide early independence, and some early deadlines are in spring and summer! Check out my guide below for navigating the process, plus a curated fellowship list with deadlines, salaries & more.

We call those the "Four Ss," but unfortunately the title got cut. Also in the paper, the "Four Fs": Feeding, Fleeing, Fighting, and Mating.

Manoj Doss not exist@manojdoss.bsky.social · last yr.

Sometimes fancy science-y words are unnecessary (from Nature Reviews Neuroscience www.nature.com/articles/s41...).

Thanks @harvardmcb.bsky.social‬ for sharing this recap of our work! Click through at the mcb.harvard link, or in my tweetorial below for full text access! bsky.app/profile/did:...

Harvard_MCB@harvardmcb.bsky.social · last yr.

Innate or Earned? Rethinking the Role of Activity in Brain Development #Science #SciPub #ResearchPublis 🧠 🧫🧪🧬 🤖 💡 www.mcb.harvard.edu/department/n... @bdanubius.bsky.social @neurovenki.bsky.social @harvardbrainsci.bsky.social @dulaclab.bsky.social @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social

Interesting review on the acquisition of motor skills through (1) innate (2) opportunity-based and (3) systematic tuning processes. The framework is compelling although (2) and (3) may I think be the same process at different time scales. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Three systems of circuit formation: assembly, updating and tuning - Nature Reviews Neuroscience

In this Perspective, Barabási, Ferreira Castro and Engert challenge the notion that learning and plasticity primarily drive the assembly of neural circuits. They present a tripartite framework for how...

nature.com

Thanks for sharing!! For anyone interested in a quick recap, see our thread here: bsky.app/profile/bdan...

Cedric Boeckx@cedricboeckx.bsky.social · last yr.

Very good Perspective piece by @bdanubius.bsky.social and colleagues in @natrevneurosci.bsky.social For nature-nurture fans: looking at neural circuit formation, and the role of development, learning + the complexities of the genotype-phenotype mappings www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How much do we *really* learn? In @natrevneurosci.bsky.social‬ with Florian Engert and André Ferreira Castro, we address why most of you humans firmly believe that patterned activity plays a necessary and instructive role in shaping neural circuits.

Nature Reviews Neuroscience@natrevneuro.nature.com · last yr.

Three systems of circuit formation: assembly, updating and tuning — a Perspective by Dániel L. Barabási, André Ferreira Castro & Florian Engert @bdanubius.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Mating proximity blinds threat perception Valentine's Day themed paper: how a dopamine-governed filter during courtship turns off the serotonergic wave that would otherwise force them to abort and flee. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07890-3

Not sure why @macshine.bsky.social @drbreaky.bsky.social + co are not posting more about their fantastic paper from last week: "Multiscale organization of neuronal activity unifies scale-dependent theories of brain function" www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

I was part of two (successful) union fights at Harvard, Grad Student and Postdoc. All the best to the @forbesunion.bsky.social team in the coming days!

ForbesUnion@forbesunion.bsky.social · 2y ago

Congratulations, Daniel! The newsroom is calling out @Forbes for paying some of the lowest salaries in news journalism and proposing a miserly 1% bump each year. Repost to tell @Forbes you believe in fair pay!

Massively humbled to be on the 2025 Forbes Science 30 under 30 List Huge thanks to my mentors, family, friends and collaborators — I would not be here with you all. Now here's to living up to his honor in my next 30 years! #ForbesUnder30

Hotspot shelters stimulate frog resistance to chytridiomycosis by Waddle et al 🔥 frogs sauna to fight fungal infection 🔥 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07582-y

Are you a graduate student in NeuroAI? Check out this fantastic summer internship at CSHL, where you can work with @tonyzador.bsky.social and the crew. I had a lot of fun in the first cohort, and they've only gotten more GPUs since then :) www.schooljobs.com/careers/cshl...

Career Opportunities | Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Careers

schooljobs.com

For senior grad students. Please spread the word!

Emergence of social phases in human movement by Zhang et al We are nothing but water vapor tumbling around in the universe (at least that's what I learned from this paper) journals.aps.org/pre/abstract...

Emergence of social phases in human movement

Ultra-wideband radio frequency identification technology was used to collect spatiotemporal data on movements in four different classroom and playground settings. The data explore predominantly low-sp...

journals.aps.org

Finishing up your PhD, and looking for a postdoc? Check out my guide on applying for postdoc fellowships: barabasi.me/fellowships/ I also curate a list of fellowships here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets... DMs are open, please send feedback and questions!

Two more tenure-track (or tenured in one case!) positions at Harvard, through the Kempner Institute - in Computer Science and in Applied Math! Please spread the word. Deadlines on Dec 15, 2023. 🧪 academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/12963 academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/12964

#221: Scalable genetic screening for regulatory circuits using compressed Perturb-seq by Yao et al Compute twice, measure once? How sparse sensing can get you more insight with fewer scRNA experiments. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#220: A d factor? Understanding trait distractibility and its relationships with ADHD symptomatology and hyperfocus by Han Zhang et al A link between a general predictor of distractibility and hyperfocus, both on work and distractions. journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

A d factor? Understanding trait distractibility and its relationships with ADHD symptomatology and h...

People differ substantially in their vulnerability to distraction. Yet, many types of distractions exist, from external stimulation to internal thoughts. How should we characterize individual differen...

journals.plos.org

#219: Multi-donor human cortical Chimeroids reveal individual susceptibility to neurotoxic triggers by Antón Bolaños et al Multiplexing developmental perturbation testing in organoid cultures! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Multi-donor human cortical Chimeroids reveal individual susceptibility to neurotoxic triggers

bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

biorxiv.org

#218: Comprehensive cell atlas of the first-trimester developing human brain by Emelie Braun et al An unbelievable dataset, the BICCN papers provide a massive resource for follow-up explorations. science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Comprehensive cell atlas of the first-trimester developing human brain

The adult human brain comprises more than a thousand distinct neuronal and glial cell types, a diversity that emerges during early brain development. To reveal the precise sequence of events during ea...

science.org

#217: An analog-AI chip for energy-efficient speech recognition and transcription by Ambrogio et al Towards a future where trained AI models can be deposited on energy-efficient analog chips? nature.com/articles/s41...

An analog-AI chip for energy-efficient speech recognition and transcription - Nature

A low-power chip that runs AI models using analog rather than digital computation shows comparable accuracy on speech-recognition tasks but is more than 14 times as energy efficient.

nature.com

#216: Learning spatio-temporal patterns with Neural Cellular Automata by Richardson, Antal, Blythe, Schumacher Intricate training methods allow NCAs to learn custom morphologies and transitions. arxiv.org/abs/2310.14809

#215: A marmoset brain cell census reveals regional specialization of cellular identities by fenna krienen et al Massive resource on cell type identities and distributions across a nonhuman primate's brain! science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#214: Spatial enhancer activation determines inhibitory neuron identity by Elena Dvoretskova et al Beautiful study combining diverse omics practices to understand PN vs IN differentiation. biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Five years of work reduced down to one button press. My research wouldn't be possible without modern tech, but moments like these I miss the loss of physicality in administrative processes.