When #HHMIJanelia released the #Drosophila hemibrain in 2020, rendering all cell types at once with full shading/shadows was too hard, so the video showed them region by region. Technology has since advanced, and I went back and rendered them all together. I like how it shows the internal structure.

On this day 10 years ago, #Tableau released Vizable for the iPad. It gave a way to explore data with gestures: pinch/unpinch to aggregate/disaggregate, swipe to filter out, etc. The development effort, led by Robin Stewart and Dave Story, was great fun. #DataViz #DataVis vimeo.com/142648727

Some fly neurons are “dimorphic”, existing in both males and females but connecting to different neighboring neurons. Neighbors may be “isomorphic”, the same in both male and female; or sex specific; or dimorphic themselves. Here's an example, the type AOTU012, present in left and right instances.

A connectome spanning the brain and nerve cord reveals interesting pathways. Visual-motor pathways connect visual neurons, which help the fly detect objects, to motor neurons, which help the fly move in response. Here's one such pathway, from R1-R6 visual neurons to the DNg13 motor neuron.

Rendering this video was a nice test for #Blender3d, as the full set of bodies visible by the end involved almost 1.1 billion polygons. It all worked out well on our H200 cluster.

🌟 Launch your own lab at Janelia 🌟 Advance our understanding of biology through theory, computational modeling & machine learning. 🔹 No teaching requirements 🔹 100% internally funded 🔹 Collaborate with expert support teams 📅 Apply by Nov. 4 👉 https://janelia.link/groupleader

A second AI Engineer position is now open, for work at the intersection of protein engineering, evolution, and machine learning: hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...

Come to #HHMIJanelia to work on the frontiers of AI and biology. Apply now for an AI Engineer position working on protein biosensors: hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern... More openings coming soon. Interesting AI is widespread at Janelia, like this diffusion model from Larissa Heinrich.

Fly labs — Now is the time to show some solidarity and chip in support for this vital resource!

The #HHMIJanelia FuncEWorm project is building the first cellular/molecular blueprint of an entire organism, the C. elegans nematode. Here's a video showing some of what's involved: light sheet fluorescence microscopy, electron microscopy, spatial transcriptomics. www.janelia.org/project-team...

What does a neural network look like? Maybe like this view of Larissa Heinrich's U-net for organelle segmentation, with edges between layer inputs and outputs. Want to help build networks like this? Join #HHMIJanelia's new AI initiative as a data engineer: hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern...

Interested in AI and scientific discovery? HHMI Janelia has openings for data engineers as part of a new AI initiative. Preference for senior candidates with experience developing pipelines for scientific data, especially in biology or medicine. hhmi.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/Extern... #FediHire

Igor Siwanowicz created these images of the underside of the front foot of a male diving beetle. You can see suction cups that are used during mating, as well as a broad plate and exterior spines that aid in swimming.

This Juneteenth we're spotlighting the work of the first Black trained TV meteorologist, June Bacon-Bercey.

Cleaning up disk space, I found this image I made for someone not long after the release of the #HHMIJanelia #Drosophila hemibrain #connectome in 2020. It shows EPG neurons in pink providing inputs to PFL1 neurons in transparent grey. I'm not sure if the image was ever used.

The video shows electron microscopy matched to light microscopy, perfect for #FluorescenceFriday. Takashi Kawase and Hideo Otsuna wrote the renderer, VVD Viewer, and I generated the animation with neuVid.

Happy to officially introduce FilaBuster - a strategy for rapid, light-mediated intermediate filament disassembly. Compatible with multiple IF types, modular in design, and precise enough to induce localized filament disassembly in live cells. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🎉Congratulations to HHMI’s Beautiful Biology, winner of a 2025 Webby Award in the Science Websites and Mobile Sites category ➡️ hhmi.news/42KRBpI 💻Explore the site ➡️ www.hhmi.org/beautifulbio... 📷Igor Siwanowicz

Wanted to share some key takeaways from this meeting for the broader public. If you were there and I missed things, please add on to this thread!

We're looking for 1-2 enthusiastic early career chemists to join our Open Chemistry team at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social. Come help us create amazing dyes and share them with the world. Please share with the best recent/soon-to-be B.S. chemists you know! bit.ly/42w8C6N

If you are a scientist who is looking for joy in these times, I would strongly suggest signing up for @skypeascientist.bsky.social. I spent part of my afternoon talking to second graders who had AMAZING questions and asked me what advice I wanted from 2nd graders. Wholesome, joyful, science-y fun!

I know there's a 𝒍𝒐𝒕 going on right now, but I couldn’t be prouder to share this long-incubated labor of love: the complete connectome of the male 𝐷𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑎 optic lobe 🧠🪰 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

When beauty and wonder seem elusive, try HHMI's Beautiful Biology site, for a reminder of what the scientific study of nature has to offer. Noah Green and the team update the collection every week and write accessible descriptions for everything. www.hhmi.org/beautifulbiology

Excited to be presenting this work at #cosyne2025 this week - as a poster (session 3, no. 3-017) and as part of the “Reimagining RL in the Brain” workshop organised by Alison Comrie and @nathanieldaw.bsky.social. My first in-person cosyne, so looking forward to it!

Is anyone using #GodotEngine for #Drosophila #Neuroscience experiments in VR, as an open-source alternative to #Unity3D? Requirements include high frame rates (120+ Hz), support for multiple cameras and for processing of the final frame image (to stitch a panorama), or multiple output displays.

It's fascinating to see #Drosophila #Neuroscience experiments run in virtual reality (VR), with a fruit fly walking on a tiny trackball looking at tiny video displays. Here's a schematic of @hannah-haberkern.bsky.social 's rig, from our 2022 preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2022...

Today is #InternationalWomensDay Progress on #GenderEquality in health care is too slow. Women have distinct & changing health needs at different stages of their lives. Health care should be easy to access, fair & tailored to meet each woman’s unique needs & circumstances. 🔗 bit.ly/3DmZQ2o

I wanted a distraction from the news so I made this video, of some #Drosophila neurons with interesting morphologies: the mushroom body output neurons (MBONs). I used reconstructions from the FlyWire data set, and rendered with #Blender3D driven by neuVid.

2 PhD students recently met at a conference & Trump's slashing of research & science bound them With only 3 other scientists they started a movement that's growing around the country On March 7 in Washington DC, and state capitals, "Stand Up for Science" will take place All details below & bravo!

"These kinds of shocks are going to lead to a mass exodus … for minorities in particular.” For my latest @science.org story, I spoke with early career researchers who have been affected by the federal upheaval and are concerned about what it means for their future. www.science.org/content/arti...

#Cellpose 3 paper now out. Not all images are perfect. Restore your images with Cellpose3 to get better segmentations, w/ @marius10p.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Wow! When If/Then kicked off almost 6 years we had no idea what a ride it would be! We’ve been featured in museums, textbooks, on TV shows and in the largest exhibit of statues of women in the world! What is If/Then? youtube.com/shorts/hcxDo...

Today is International Day of Women & Girls in Science. Marie Curie, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. Her contributions have left an indelible mark on the world of science & health & continue to inspire generations of scientists & innovators. 🔬 #WomenInScience #WomenInSTEM

Color is enriching. Here is a meditation on coloring a ring of #Drosophila EPG neurons by heading angle. These colormaps---"cividis", "plasma", "viridis", "turbo"---aim to be "equiluminant" and/or "perceptually uniform", with the goal of faithfully depicting the smooth increase of the angle.

On this date in 1870. The entity that would become the National Weather Service was born. No telling how many lives have been protected & saved in the past 155 years because of the dedication of the weather professionals, both past & present, that tirelessly monitor the weather across the US. #NOAA

📢 Submissions are now open for the CellMap Segmentation Challenge. Build the best method for segmenting cellular organelles in vEM using our 289 annotated volumes, 40 organelle classes, and 22 diverse cell and tissue types. 🔗 hhmi.news/410evJQ

Here's a #MicroscopyMonday segmentation of some neurons from the optic lobe, or visual processing area of the #Drosophila fruit fly's brain. The #connectome for the full optic lobe was released in 2024 by #HHMIJanelia, Google, and the University of Cambridge, with support from the Wellcome Trust.

This segmentation of #MicroscopyMonday data reconstructs neurons of the "MANC", or male adult nerve cord, from the #Drosophila fruit fly. The nerve cord is like a spinal cord and connects the brain and muscles. #HHMIJanelia, Google, and the University of Cambridge released this work in 2023.

On this day 5 years ago #HHMIJanelia and Google released the "hemibrain", a map of neural connections in much of the #Drosophila fly brain. At the time it was the largest such #connectome ever created. Here's a video from the release (polished a bit), showing the interesting shapes of the neurons.

Have questions about the 2025 #HannaGrayFellows Program? Join us for one of our informational webinar to learn more about the application process & what it means to be part of this incredible program: Wed, 1.23.25 | 3:30–4:30PM ET Thu, 1.30.25 | 3:30–4:30PM ET Register today! hhmi.news/40ymhuq

Can you spot the difference between the cells on the left and right? Read on for the solution (and a preprint announcement)… 👇 1/6

Please consider supporting Best Friends Animal Society, their emergency response fund will be used exclusively to support lifesaving work in the Los Angeles area. ​To donate, please go to www.justgiving.com/campaign/la-... ​ Or sign up to volunteer at bfas.io/VLA.

A use of #MicroscopyMonday data is making segmentations. Here's one, of #Drosophila protocerebral bridge and nodulus neurons, from the 2020 Hemibrain by #HHMIJanelia and Google. Michał Januszewski and @stardazed0.bsky.social 's team made an initial segmentation with #AI flood-fill algorithms...

Today we're thrilled to announce our 2024 #HannaGrayFellows! Please join us in welcoming and celebrating these outstanding early career scientists!

On this day 5 years ago, I released version 1.0 of neuVid. It takes high-level descriptions of #Neuroscience or #CellBiology videos and renders them with #Blender or VVD Viewer. Here's a montage of how I've used it. Thanks to #HHMIJanelia for support, especially Steve Plaza and Stuart Berg of FlyEM.

A cold, white blanket covers all the rough edges for a little while.

This #FluorescenceFriday video shows 89 volumes from the #HHMIJanelia FlyLight Split-GAL4 collection: premotor and related neurons from the #Drosophila fruit fly's equivalent of a spinal cord. I gave a high-level description of the video to neuVid, which drove rendering by VVD Viewer.

🧪✨Emerald City of #Astrocytes: My 2024 year in review as a #BBB researcher, Ph.D. candidate, & chemical engineer. 🧠⚙️ May 2025 #defy expectations and be filled with #unlimited potential for good ✨🧪 #neuroskyence

AI@HHMI builds on a strong foundation of AI-driven #science at @hhmijanelia.bsky.social. Over the next decade, HHMI will invest $500 million in tech & talent to transform scientific discovery & embed #AI systems throughout every stage of the scientific process. More/find opportunities: ai.hhmi.org

If you are a Black imaging scientist but not part of the PAIR-UP network, you should be! Check out the website & join to learn more about the imaging workshops and culturally-based professional development offered. #BLACKandSTEM #BlackInSTEM #BlackInMicroscopy www.pairupscience.org