What fun could be had!

I had such a good time visiting #UVA this week. Good views, good wine, good food, and great people. Thanks @jcoutinhobudd.bsky.social for hosting me and letting me crash lab meeting!

And look at this amazing cake that my postdoc Jackie baked for my birthday!

It's been a pretty good week for the obrownlab.com. We had a nice lab lunch to celebrate the end of the semester. InWord received the prestigious Henry Rutgers Scholar award for her honors thesis research in the lab, and it's my birthday!

Had a great time visiting WashU today and reconnecting with some old friends! Tony gave me the sweetest introduction that only 16 years of knowing me could achieve.

Had such a fun night with these ladies after an amazing day at #asn2026 @megancphd.bsky.social @laurafontenas.bsky.social @jcoutinhobudd.bsky.social and Sarah and Claudia with no bluesky. On to the last day and a bunch of our talks today.

Starting #asn2026 right with @jcoutinhobudd.bsky.social and Sarah Ackerman (not pictured but driving us lushes around town)

I created this collection of common brain models in neuroscience, all to scale Across species, brains share fundamental principles and many homologous regions But as size increases, complexity and connectivity change. We need the full spectrum, from flies to rodents, non-human primates, and humans

Another #obrownlab undergraduate honors thesis is in the books! Congratulations InWord!

@tcpotts.bsky.social paper is live. Happy to share #FishNAP, a new, non-invasive way to measure #BBB permeability in 96-well format with #zebrafish www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

So pretty!

Celebrating the submission of the 2nd paper from the O'Brown lab by @tcpotts.bsky.social and other milestones as a lab today. Should be coming to biorxiv soon!

@tcpotts.bsky.social from the @natashaobrown.bsky.social lab presenting work in progress

@tcpotts.bsky.social gave a phenomenal talk today at RADD so we all wore the Tom uniform in solidarity

Who wears it better?

“Here we developed an experimental-computational platform, WARP, for whole-brain imaging of neuronal activity during behavior, expansion-assisted spatial transcriptomics, and cellular-level registration of these two modalities.” New work from @mishaahrens.bsky.social et al. 🐟 🧠

An animal model for cerebral small vessel disease Zebrafish can be used to study the cellular mechanisms responsible for cerebral small vessel disease, which is a leading cause of stroke and dementia. 🔗 buff.ly/wchKmpT

So proud of my grad student @tcpotts.bsky.social for presenting at our first @hhmi-science.bsky.social meeting and absolutely blown away by the amazing science being done and the people doing it!

Loving my new identity as part of a gang of wine moms.

Yup! Join our fight to #SaveNCAR at tr.ee/save-ncar !

What we are experiencing is 25x of the Midway Blitz.

Explain to Congress how important it is to keep multiyear funding of NIH grants in the funding bill. This protects against Russell Vought's trick, which is to make this year's NIH budget cover multiple years of research in advance. Tell your Congresscritter. US Capitol switchboard: 202-224-3121.

Use this it's much more organized 💛

For those of us who have resources and who want to help support the fight in Minneapolis. I know I've felt helpless recently but here are some really ways to help those that are actively going through it

This is absolutely atrocious and unconstitutional. Call your representatives. We need to stand together to fight for the rights of every us citizen

I'm going to be in Boston on March 23rd if anyone wants to invite me for a talk. I'm a cheap date (no hotel or dinner necessary).

Really wish I could just curl up and relax like this unaware of the shitshow that is America. Happy #caturday

Finished up the semester with a great #obrownlab lunch to celebrate how far we've come!

Nothing quite says academic mom like sitting on the floor of your son's swim meet with your laptop and coffee looking at grad school apps

Here are some cameos during the talk yesterday and afterwards to celebrate in 👑 style. Who thinks I should wear the cape to my first student's defense?

Got my whole family to wear pink today for my reappiintment talk. Feeling all the love!

Oh how I've missed this game?

What a wonderful day talking science at Vanderbilt Cell and Developmental Biology topped off with a rooftop night cap with these great people @monica-santisteban.bsky.social @krishnamudumbi.bsky.social and Neil who has yet to get on bluesky but was a great host!

Very happy to be in Nashville today for #zebrafishzunday before my talk @vanderbilt.edu tomorrow, so here's a sneak preview of differential clearance of monomeric (turquoise) vs. oligomeric (red) amyloid beta from the zebrafish brain

Look who's the @navbo.bsky.social lab of the month! So honored. And also if you want to read my story and some unsolicited advice on the academic career path, you can also find it here in NAVBO's Lessons Learned: www.navbo.org/lessons-lear...

So honored to be invited to give a talk at #gliadelphia today. Gotta ❤️ the #glia community. So many great talks and posters. Not pictured are my new kickass silver boots

We are looking for a new technician to join our lab and gain some hands on #zebrafish and molecular biology experience. Interested parties should apply here: jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/259... Happy to answer any and all questions about the lab! #STEMJobs

#caturday to cleanse your timeliness

Really happy with how this write up about our work and me getting the @hhmi.org Freeman Hrabowski Scholar award came out. sas.rutgers.edu/about/news/r...

Happy hour with my oldest is food for the soul (so was the lobster roll)

Very proud of our #NeuroSURP student Megan Canace presenting her work in the lab this summer and representing the awesomeness of #zebrafish

Here's my child #olivefingers to brighten your feed in these depressing times

Another great #obrownlab dinner in the 📚. I'm so happy to see how we've grown in just 2 years with @tcpotts.bsky.social @lewisgall.bsky.social and others not on bluesky

Excited to announce that our collaboration with @briandaniels.bsky.social has been published today! So happy for everyone involved, but especially me and Marissa 😆. Check it out if you're interested in #neuroinflammation and the #BBB www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Here's the link: www.fda.gov/news-events/.... Please post a comment about how this would greatly inhibit scientific progress

My undergrad Inword got some really cool data this week, and I can't think of a better way to celebrate #fluorescencefriday than to share it. She injected oligomeric amyloid-B (red) and it caused these pulses of tracer leakage throughout the brain (turquoise) 1.5 days later. #BBB #zebrafish

Devastating and unnecessary

Defund the police: something that never really happened, but everybody talked about. Defund the scientists: something that's actually happening, but almost nobody's talking about in those terms.

This is where we are, America. One of my old colleagues at the University of Arizona Cancer Center has set up a GoFundMe to help fund breast cancer research in the wake of massive cuts to NIH grants.

Back in NJ, but had a great #cvb2025 with friends new and old. Can't wait to see them again next year at the Gordon