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...

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. 🧵👇

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.

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:...

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...

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

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.

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!

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...

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...

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...

#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...

#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/...

#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...

#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.

#213: GRouNdGAN: GRN-guided simulation of single-cell RNA-seq data using causal generative adversarial networks by Zinati, Takiddeen, Emad Eerie, but inspiring, how learnable the mapping is from regulatory network dynamics to gene expression biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#212: Growing Brains: Co-emergence of Anatomical and Functional Modularity in Recurrent Neural Networks by Liu, Khona, Fiete, Tegmark I wonder if this could be paired with network growth to find minimal modules + then scale them up! arxiv.org/abs/2310.077...

🔔 Postdoc alert! 📣 Join my group in 🌞 beautiful Marseille 🌞 for a fully funded 2-year #postdoc position! You'd like to develop mathematical models of the gut microbiome? 🦠 📈 Contact me! You know people who might? Help me spread the news! 🙏 Full job description 👉 web.evolbio.mpg.de/~bansept/ass...

#211: Tardigrades dramatically upregulate DNA repair pathway genes in response to ionizing radiation by Clark-Hachtel, Hibshman, De Buysscher, Goldstein Powerful study: the DNA repair genes provided up to 1000x survival when transferred to E Coli! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

#210: Cell signaling stabilizes morphogenesis against noise by Hagolani, Zimm, Marin, Ciudad On how cell-cell interactions provide stability for GRN-driven development, with a robustness-complexity tradeoff. journals.biologists.com/dev/article/...

#209: Recovery of walking after paralysis by regenerating characterized neurons to their natural target region by Squair, Milano, Sofroniew, Courtine, Anderson Beautiful targeted genetics + connectomics on harness neurodevelopment for circuit repair! www.science.org/doi/full/10....

As in, hello bluer skies! I'll be dual-posting for now, as the migration from the other app continues. First post inspired by: xkcd.com/2839/

These were my first words; what were yours?