This mug should be awarded to every academic who served as department chair.

Happy to announce our two posters at @cnsorg.bsky.social 2026 in Halifax: 1.🪼Modeling obstacle avoidance in box jellyfish with small neuronal networks (joint with Ozan Can Okay and Jan Bielecki) 2.🕸️Modeling comb jellyfish nerve nets (joint with @steinkuehler.bsky.social ). Looking forward to ✈️🇨🇦!

I feel the pain

"Please stay another year to do the revisions"

🔥 Whale Shark gliding through Bioluminescent Algae looks like its floating through space. By Mike Nulty

We are recruiting PhD students and postdocs at UIUC ECE interested in learning dynamics, spiking networks, and dynamical systems. Details: rainerengelken.github.io/join/

Belated update: I joined UIUC ECE as an Assistant Professor. Our lab works at the intersection of theoretical neuroscience, machine learning, and dynamical systems, with a focus on learning and spiking networks. I had to miss #COSYNE2026 for visa reasons. 1/2

Looking forward to reading this.

🎉 🎉 Excited to share that our paper has just been published in Chaos. Here, we introduce Network Reciprocity Control (NRC) #algorithms that make it possible to systematically tune #reciprocity and directional #asymmetry in #networks while preserving density or total weight.

In 2005, Thousands Of Toads Exploded In A Bizarre Amphibian Apocalypse

These days I drink Iranian tea everyday so I don't forget. Media coverage of these events have been very poor in my internet bubble so far.

Often

This Thursday at 3PM (UTC), we'll host @barabasi.bsky.social at the Making Connections seminar series. I'm sure it'll be a very stimulating and inspiring talk, so if you'd like to join, register via the link below: sites.google.com/view/makingc...

The sleep patterns of jellyfish and sea anemones share similarities with those of humans, according to research published in Nature Communications. The findings support the hypothesis that sleep evolved across a range of species to protect against DNA damage. 🧪

Teaching linear network analysis without solving a ten-variable system on the blackboard feels incomplete… But saves a lot of chalk.

Jellyfish sleep, which is already bizarre given they have no brains. DNA damage accumulates in their neurons when jellyfish are awake, and it gets repaired when they sleep. This might be something fundamental, evolutionarily, to the role of sleep. 🧪🌊 Link: nature.com/articles/s41...

How does a couple of cells become a brain? Join us on 12/9, 10-12pm PT for a webinar presenting the findings from 12 papers mapping brain development in new detail. 🔗 https://alleninstitute-org.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_phxk87APQh-kgRYqp0jO5Q#/registration Image: Jasiek Krzysztofiak/@nature.com

Closing tabs with papers I promised myself i'll read

pursuing an academic career is like thinking the stripper loves you

Every academic has one superpower: the ability to turn a five-minute task into a three-month digression

If you're interested in dynamical systems analysis for neuroscience, definitely check out @oliviercodol.bsky.social 's revised version of our RL paper! Very cool results in the new Fig 6, worth it regardless of if you saw our previous version or if it's all new. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Another casualty of the LLM revolution. In "arXiv’s CS category, review articles and position papers must now be accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review."

Happy Halloween

“The bad review will come from your list of suggested reviewers”

Having a PhD means you can find the word “unfortunately” in an email faster that the search function

Talk announcement (on site/ hybrid): Tuesday, October 28 at 10:00 am. The talk will be given by our guest from Zurich, Prof. Dr. Melika Payvand. The title of the talk is: Physical Computation: From Neural Morphology to Silicon (and beyond) Substrates More details in the attached PDF.

Edinburgh castle failing to render, likely thanks to the AWS outage

The true academic method: overthink, underdeliver, cite yourself.

In academia, the pinnacle of achievement is a pdf no one can access and I think that's beautiful

Sidney Pontes-Filho uses critical neural CA for reservoir computing #DistributedCiphers #ALIFE2025

Takashi Ikegami and Hiroki Iizuka open the Generative Artificial Life satellite #ALIFE2025

Distributed neural computation and the evolution of the first brains https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.10.03.680388v1

Can a single cell learn? Even without a brain, some microbes show simple forms of cognition. Can this basal cognition be engineered? Check our new paper with @jordiplam.bsky.social on the minimal synthetic circuits & their cognitive limits. @drmichaellevin.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Selfishly, I’ll plug our tool LLM agent in system #AmadeusGPT - which lets you vibe code your behavioral analysis ;) and even gives you interpretable and verifiable outputs! www.mackenziemathislab.org/amadeusgpt

One hundred years ago, a 23-year-old postdoc named Werner Heisenberg completed a calculation that would become the heart of quantum mechanics, a radical yet stunningly accurate theory of the atomic and subatomic world. www.quantamagazine.org/its-a-mess-a...

We were asked to write a commentary on NeuroAI for Nat. Rev. Neuro. with Sadra Sadeh, so here it is: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How does the structure of a neural circuit shape its function? @neuralreckoning.bsky.social & I explore this in our new preprint: doi.org/10.1101/2025... 🤖🧠🧪 🧵1/9

Do memories need embodiment, but not necessarily neurons? Some hints ⬇️ www.quantamagazine.org/what-can-a-c...

I finally had time to update PyCX to ver. 1.2! Many new models and bug fixes. Enjoy!! github.com/hsayama/PyCX

We're hiring,, of interest to people in spiking neural networks and neuromorphic particularly. See below. 👇 Note the deadline for applications is very soon! Apologies for this but various admin necessities made it unavoidable.

🧠 Gewebestrukturen aus dem Labor: #Hirnorganoide sind ein Modellsystem des Gehirns und imitieren Teile der Hirnfunktion. Damit ermöglichen sie einen experimentellen Zugang zu Forschung am Organ. Ein Digitales Dossier gibt einen Überblick: interaktiv.leopoldina.org/hirnorganoide/

Finally published: “Top-down and bottom-up neuroscience: overcoming the clash of research cultures” www.nature.com/articles/s41... Looking for ways to better understand different neuroscientific perspectives and enable productive collaborations

Do you like neuronal networks and maybe also programming? 🧮🕸️💻 I am looking for a research assistant to work on the general topic of neuronal network models, either theoretically or with a link to specific model organisms. Please see below for more details. ⬇️ #research #neuronalnetworks #kiel #cau

A gym that you go to but instead of working out you write papers

Episode #30 in #TheoreticalNeurosciencePodcast: On co-dependent excitatory and inhibitory plasticity – with Tim Vogels @tpvogels.bsky.social theoreticalneuroscience.no/thn30 How can excitatory and inhibitory synaptic plasticity, co-exist in spiking neural network models? With co-dependence!

#forest #sky #path #hamburg #silentsunday

Got prov. approval for 2 major grants in Neuro-AI & Dynamical Systems Reconstruction, on learning & inference in non-stationary environments, out-of-domain generalization, and DS foundation models. To all AI/math/DS enthusiasts: Expect job announcements (PhD/PostDoc) soon! Feel free to get in touch.