🪰 A new ‘Eyemap’ developed by a team led by Arthur Zhao & @michaelreiser.bsky.social reveals how visual information detected by the fly’s eye shows up in neurons deep in the brain. Remarkably, the eye’s shape determines how flies see motion.👁️ 🔗 hhmi.news/4kSZjou

Seeking applications from recent PhDs in neuro, psych, ling, philo, comp sci, or other cog sci discipline, for our MindCORE Fellowship. MindCORE is an interdisciplinary effort at Penn to understand human intelligence and behavior. Apply by Dec 1: mindcore.sas.upenn.edu/post-doctora...

Excited to announce our new pre-print (www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...)! This collaborative work (co-led by Adriane Otopalik and Gerry Rubin) examines how neuronal circuits regulate social behaviors, like courtship🫶 and aggression🥊, across sexes. #neuroscience #Drosophila #WomenInSTEM 🧪1/

Join the team at Janelia to use #theory, computation, and modeling to tackle bold questions in #biology. Collaborate across scientific disciplines to drive discovery. Apply by Nov. 3 @ https://janelia.link/theoryfellowprogram #computationalbiology #sciencecareers

Pleased to have this review out in @cp-trendsneuro.bsky.social. In it we discuss various aspects of the intersection between foraging behaviors and neuroscience, and offer some future directions: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The debate of whether the brain is optimal is the wrong one. Quoting one of my favorite writings from Herbert Simon (1992): The predictions of an optimizing theory depend as much on the postulated side conditions as on the optimization assumption. (By side conditions here, he meant constraints).

✨ We’re #hiring Theory Fellows!✨ Janelia is recruiting early-career scientists to join our collaborative research environment and use #computation & #theory to tackle bold questions in #biology. 🔗 Apply by Nov. 3 👉 janelia.link/theoryfellow... @hhmi.org

📢We're #hiring Group Leaders! Apply to lead a lab at Janelia & advance biology using theory, computational modeling & machine learning. 🔹5-year renewable appointment 🔹Pioneer new tools & approaches 🔹Collaborate across disciplines Apply by Nov. 4👉 https://janelia.link/groupleader

Bayesians in shambles

📢 Students & postdocs in #TheoreticalNeuroscience 👉 Join us this November for a "by the students, for the students" workshop featuring whiteboard-style tutorials, in-depth discussions, and research talks. ✈️ Travel, lodging & registration covered Apply by Aug. 5 @ janelia.news/THE25

What is the probability of an image? What do the highest and lowest probability images look like? Do natural images lie on a low-dimensional manifold? In a new preprint with Zahra Kadkhodaie and @eerosim.bsky.social, we develop a novel energy-based model in order to answer these questions: 🧵

Very excited to be part of this. Huge thank you to the @simonsfoundation.org for their support and vision. www.simonsfoundation.org/2025/04/24/s... Also, job openings in this context! Please apply and forward to anyone who may be interested! hr.myu.umn.edu/jobs/ext/367...

Very happy to see our work finally in print! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... TLDR: Tilt illusion is not a bug, but a feature of a well-designed visual system that maximizes information capacity adaptively based on spatial context. (1/6)

How can AI help you to analyze your microscopy images? Find out at the "Machine Learning for Microscopy Image Analysis" course at the @mblscience.bsky.social in Woods Hole from Aug 22-Sep 6! Applications are due 🚨 April 30 🚨 Read on for more! 👇 www.mbl.edu/education/ad...

Here at Princeton, we’re amplifying our university president’s leadership. It’s time for everyone - faculty, students, staff - to speak out. tl;dr: rights can’t be blackmailed. From me and science colleagues: www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2025...

Columbia University has failed to defend academic freedom & freedom of speech & allowed a great institution to be bullied & extorted into submission by an administration hellbent on contorting higher education to their will. The AAUP condemns this capitulation. We can & must fight back.

"And I think once you make concessions once, it's hard not to make them again." Princeton President Chris Eisgruber's warning to universities applies to law firms, companies, foundations, nonprofits, and more. www.pbs.org/newshour/sho...

Pro-tip for university administrators: when the government illegally cancels your grants, your first response shouldn't be "you kind of have a point."

old Soviet joke for our times: Guy stops by the newsstand every day, scans the front page, doesn’t buy the paper. One day the vendor asks what he’s up to. Guy says: “looking for an obituary.” Vendor says “those are towards the back of the paper, comrade.” Guy says: “not the one I’m looking for.”

I got laid off today, with the rest of 18F. 18F was an elite federal software shop. We made gov't websites work better, more efficiently for the American people. We saved taxpayers from getting screwed over by contractors. And were fired for it. We made this website to tell our story: 18f.org

Portuguese editorial cartoonist Zez Vaz reaches back to Tiananmen Square to call on American defiance.

I maxed out my credit card, emptied my savings account, and took out a loan to move from Alabama to Bethesda, MD. I don’t even qualify for unemployment since I’ve only worked at NIH for a month. I will be financially and medically devastated. Seeking suggestions for anywhere that’s hiring!!

We read "Large Concept Models" in our reading group. It models language at the sentence resolution - "concepts". We had lots of thoughts about it! You can read them in our new Janelia CVML blog post: janelia-cvml.github.io/blog/posts/L... #ML #AI #Janelia @adjavon.bsky.social @bogovicj.bsky.social

This comment on the NYT site sounds spot-on, and it is why I disagree with my colleagues who say: "We'll know more in a few weeks, let's wait and see how things shake down before we take any action.": "As someone who grew up under an authoritarian regime, I can offer one crucial piece of advice: ...

Dear US scientists, We've been hearing a lot of questions of the form "Why aren't universities doing anything!? They need to speak out!" We can explain. It's bad news. We're on our own. But understanding why can help us all figure out our plan. Read along in thread 1/x 🧪

Growing up in an authoritarian country, resisting sometimes felt easy - because all it takes is for everyone to say “No, this is not right”. But it is also incredibly hard, because it takes all of us to stand up and refuse compliance. I suppose, for now, the best I can do is speak up.

All NIH study sections canceled indefinitely. This will halt science and devastate research budgets in universities.

Just leaving this here... verfassungsblog.de/the-authorit...

We’re #hiring Theory Fellows. 🥼 Our Computation & Theory research area is recruiting early-career scientists to test theories, collaborate across research areas & tackle fundamental questions in biology. Apply by Jan. 7 ➡️ janelia.link/theoryfellow... #computationalbiology

We are looking for exceptional #AIScientist|s to join our #AI@HHMI initiative at #HHMIJanelia. We want to uncover fundamental principles underlying complex biological systems that are inaccessible without new innovations that combine #AI with experimental design. ai.hhmi.org#join-our-team 1/4

Janelia is recruiting AI scientists and theory fellows to collaborate with experimental scientists on hard biological problems - these positions have a considerable level of independence and very competitive salaries. Join our great community! Ai.hhmi.org janelia.org/theoryfellow #neuroscience #AI

This is the tilt illusion. In a new study we can provide a satisfying answer to how and where this effect arises in the brain, as well as the teleological "why" a well-designed visual system might have this property. 🧪