“On the Grand Plan for brain and mind research”

Nicole Rust is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania

Please join the Philosophy Department for day three of the Royce Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind series, on the topic of “Biology and Idealism,” given by Peter Godfrey-Smith, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. A public reception will follow the event.

Title:  Development of Adult Neuroplasticity

Host:  Dr. Justin Fallon

Please join the Philosophy Department for day one of the Royce Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind series, on the topic of “Life and Mind,” given by Peter Godfrey-Smith, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney. A public reception will follow the event.

Presenter: Tim Divoll, Senior Data Scientist, Advanced Research Computing, Graphics, CCV.

Preparing code for publication supplement: Packaging with Quarto Books and publishing on GH Pages

In many cases, when researchers publish a paper, code needs to be submitted as well to satisfy data availability agreements. Results are not really reproducible without the source data and the code. In this workshop, we’ll walk through a recent example where several R Notebooks were used for an ecological analysis of plant DNA barcodes; we packaged them into a codebook where each chapter is one of the analyses in the Methods section of the paper. Anyone can access the published codebook via a GitHub Pages URL and the individual code notebooks in the source repo.

Level: Beginner

DSCoV (Data Science, Computation, and Visualization) workshops are introductions to basic data science and programming skills and tools, offered by and for Brown staff, faculty, and students (with occasional presenters from outside Brown). The workshops are interactive, so bring a laptop. All are welcome.

These workshops can be attended in person (Carney Innovation Hub, 164 Angell St, Floor 4) or on Zoom: https://brown.zoom.us/j/96158269691 

Food will not be served; please bring your own lunch. 

Walter J Atwood, PhD; Professor and Chair,
Dept of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry

Syed H Rizvi, MD; Professor
Dept. of Neurology
The Warren Alpert Medical School

Host:  Eric Morrow, MD, PhD

P&A/CCBS Seminar

Speaker: Dr. Samantha Wood, Indiana University
When: Thursday 4/17 at 12pm
Where: Carney Innovation Zone, 164 Angell Street, 4th Floor
Title: Reverse engineering the origins of mind
Abstract:
For centuries, philosophers and psychologists have debated the origins of the mind. What are the necessary “ingredients” for perceiving and understanding the world around us? A key puzzle is object perception: understanding the essential ingredients that enable a mind to recognize and make sense of objects in its surroundings. Our lab performs parallel controlled-rearing studies on newborn animals and artificial intelligence (AI) models to reverse engineer the origins of core mental skills, like object perception. With controlled-rearing studies of newborn animals, we precisely record and manipulate all of the visual stimuli available from birth to test how visual experience impacts object perception. We then “rear” AI models in the same environments as animals and test them on the same tasks, using AI models as task-performing models of developing animal minds. I will argue that this reverse-engineering approach has provided a surprising discovery about the origins of animal minds: that domain-general learning mechanisms are sufficient to learn core cognitive abilities

Title:  Molecular mechanisms underlying impaired adult hippocampal neurogenesis in Alzheimer’s disease”

Advisor: Dr. Ashley Webb

Title:  Prior experience shapes our perception: the role of real-world statistical regularities

Host:  Dr. Joo-Hyun Song

Leveraging Deep Learning Approaches to Uncover Therapeutic Targets for Glioblastoma

Advisors: Nikos Tapinos, MD, PhD and Ritambhara Singh, PhD

Glioblastoma, the most aggressive and prevalent primary brain tumor, remains incurable despite the multimodal standard of therapy that involves maximal surgical removal of the tumor followed by concurrent chemoradiotherapy. The median survival time of less than one year underscores the critical need for effective and innovative therapies. Recent computational advances, and deep learning approaches in particular, have revolutionized our ability to analyze large amounts of complex biological data, offering unprecedented opportunities to understand disease mechanisms and identify potential therapeutic targets.

This dissertation presents three chapters on leveraging novel deep learning approaches to uncover therapeutic targets for glioblastoma. The first chapter employs surprisal analysis, a thermodynamics-based information-theoretic method, to analyze single-cell RNA sequencing data from patient-derived glioma stem cells (GSCs), a population of cells that drives tumor recurrence and therapeutic resistance. We investigate the single-cell GSC response to a microenvironment factor CHI3L1, a highly expressed secreted protein associated with therapy resistance, low patient survival, and more aggressive phenotypes in glioblastoma. Through a novel integration of graph neural networks and surprisal analysis, we identify enriched transcription factors in CHI3L1-treated cells that contribute to treatment-induced expansion of subpopulations, establishing new relationships between CHI3L1 and enriched transcription factors in glioblastoma.

The second chapter presents a novel counterfactual explanation method called Sparsely Primed Autoencoder Counterfactual Explanations (SPACE), a post-hoc explainability method for single-cell data. Counterfactuals are generated instances containing information on which features to alter to obtain a particular model prediction. We present a multi-objective autoencoder-based framework that identifies a reliable set of essential genes to perturb to achieve the desired class prediction, providing a valuable approach for 1) discovering potential therapeutic targets from single-cell datasets and 2) informing target selection for follow-up validation experiments.

The third chapter introduces a workflow integrating existing computational and deep learning tools to identify potentially immunogenic neoantigens, or newly formed proteins due to tumor mutations, from bulk RNA-sequencing data. Using the pipeline, we identify a candidate set of immunogenic neoantigens, potentially enabling innovative immunotherapies for glioblastoma and other cancers. Taken together, these three chapters offer computational frameworks for identifying therapeutic targets, with implications extending beyond glioblastoma.

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April 8th Seminar

Big data in the littlest state: Rapid scaling of genomics at the Rhode Island State Health Laboratories.

Sean Sierra-Patev (Senior Environmental Laboratory Scientist in Bioinformatics, Rhode Island Department of Health)

Dr. Sierra-Patev will talk about the brave new world of big genomic data in the Rhode Island state health labs (and in public health laboratories more broadly). Rhode Island has specific challenges due to our size and infrastructure, while simultaneously having great success in terms of speed and agility.

Abstract: The scale of whole-genome sequencing activities and the associated data at the Rhode Island State Health Laboratories has increased exponentially in the last few years, escalating from a niche analysis type with narrow scope to a dedicated program with considerable throughput. Formally existing for less than four years, the sequencing lab now employs four dedicated staff and generates several thousand complete genomes a year from multiple sequencing chemistries. The scope, application, and depth of analysis changes constantly, and the program now has demonstrated capacity on par with far older and larger labs in peer states. This talk will cover the types of data generated at the lab, the analyses performed, the infrastructure which supports this work, and the challenges associated with analyzing and curating this data within the limitations of the state health lab. The achievements and shortcomings of this program will be expressed frankly in the hopes that an accurate picture of this “real world” application for big (to us) data will help foster discussion around improvements and areas of growth, and maybe inspire interest in public health as a field of study.

Bio: Dr. Sean Sierra-Patev is a public health Bioinformatician with a broad scope of application. He is currently a Senior Environmental Laboratory Scientist in the Rhode Island Department of Health. He earned his PhD in Fungal Systematics from Clark University, an MS in Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology from Cornell University and a BS in Microbiology with a minor in Plant Pathology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has a particular interest in extrapolating species, population, and demographic information from low quality or contaminated sequence data and in applying that process to on-the-ground problems like disease identification or strain typing.

______

Data Matters is intended to stimulate conversations and collaboration by bringing multiple perspectives to challenging data-driven problems and talks are structured to be more of an interactive experience than traditional academic seminars. Data Matters includes scholars with backgrounds in the physical, biological, computational, and social sciences who share their perspectives on why data matters.

Held on select Tuesdays at 3:00pm at the Data Science Institute. 

Title: The life and death of an oligodendrocyte
Host: Dr. Sonia Mayoral

Navigating an academic career comes with constant change, high expectations, and unanticipated challenges. This interactive workshop is designed to equip postdocs and early-career researchers with the tools to maintain well-being, build resilience, and lead projects effectively—even in times of uncertainty. You’ll gain practical strategies to prevent and identify burnout, integrate personal wellness with professional demands, and cultivate a supportive and motivated work environment for your research team. Join us for an empowering session that will help you sustain both your passion and productivity in the long run!

Kelly Holder, PhD, Chief Well-Being Officer of the Warren Alpert Medical School, will lead the workshop. This event is co-sponsored by the Office of University Postdoctoral Affairs (OUPA) and the Carney Institute for Brain Science as part of The Carney Institute’s Advancing Research Careers Program (R25NS124530).

This event will take place in person on Thursday, April 3, 2025, from 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM at the Innovation Zone inside the Carney Institute for Brain Science (164 Angell Street, 4th Floor, Providence, RI 02906).

Light refreshments will be provided, and the event will last about 90 minutes.

Target Audience: This series of events is designed for early career scholars, including Carney ARC scholars, senior postdoctoral scholars at Brown, and junior faculty members at Brown who have recently transitioned from postdoctoral appointments.

The Carney Institute’s Advancing Research Careers (ARC) program aims to advance the research careers of women and persons historically excluded due to ethnicity and race (PEERs) in brain sciences at the level of advanced postdoctoral scholars and junior faculty. ARC is funded by an R25 award from NINDS to support an annual cohort of highly qualified participants through structured mentorship, research support, and activities that contribute to successful neuroscience research careers.

Registration is required. Space is limited to 50 attendees, and registration will close when capacity is reached.

Title: Postpartum Modulation of Hypothalamic Feeding and Parenting Neural Circuits

Advisor: Dr. Michael Krashes, NIH

Title: Silencing FUS and Other Rare Genetic Forms of ALS
Host: Dr. Gilad Barnea

Discover the latest innovative mind/brain research at Brown at the 27th annual Mind Brain Research Day! The event features a poster session, bag lunch, and a series of short talks by Brown researchers on the theme, “Linking Circuits to Brain Health and Behavior.” Please register by March 11.

Schedule of Events

Poster Session

11 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.
Sayles Hall

Bag Lunch

11:30 a.m. - 12:45 p.m.
Sayles Hall
(Register by March 11 to reserve a lunch.)

Research Talks & Poster Awards

1 p.m. - 3 p.m.
Salomon Hall

Amanda Arulpragasam, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
“Low intensity focused ultrasound: Early experiences with non-invasive deep brain stimulation”

Brian Kavanaugh, Psy.D.
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
“Modulating the oscillatory dynamics underlying adolescent working memory with iTBS”

Nicole McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior
“Evolution of psychiatric neurosurgery for OCD”

Matt Nassar, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Neuroscience and of Cognitive and Psychological Sciences
“Neural representations for flexible learning”

Frederike Petzschner, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Brain Science (Research)
“Mechanistic insights into chronic pain”

Mascha van ‘t Wout-Frank, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior (Research)
“Synergistic application of transcranial direct current stimulation and virtual reality exposure for PTSD”

STEM Day 2025! Students from the Providence area visit Brown for a day of interactive workshops and discussions about science and college access. This event is open to all STEM Departments/fields. This event will be held on March 25th, during Brown’s Spring Break. Please fill out this form if you would like to participate.

Read about STEM Day 2024 in News@Brown to learn more about this collaborative campus-wide event.

Title:  Glia regulate network states to modulate processing of sensory information 

Host:  Dr. Carlos Aizenman

Manshu Yang, PhD
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
University of Rhode Island

The past decade has seen a rapid growth in research using ecological momentary assessments (EMA) to examine how human behavior and experience unfold and interact in real time and in natural context. While intensive and proximal assessments in EMA studies have numerous benefits, missing responses are inevitable and can be substantial. On the other hand, EMA brings a unique opportunity to address this missing data challenge, by collecting later retrieved data that provide direct information on initially missing responses. This talk will focus on Dr. Yang’s recent work in developing a Bayesian approach that handles missing not at random data in EMA studies using later retrieved information and comparing its performance to other commonly used methods, such as maximum likelihood estimation and multi-level multiple imputation.

Title: Alcohol-induced Plasticity within Dopaminergic Memory Circuits in Drosophila

Advisor:  Dr. Karla Kaun

Presenter: Frank Donnelly, Head of Library GIS & Data Services

Routing with Python and the OpenRouteService API

In this session you’ll learn how to plot and save the fastest or shortest driving, walking, or cycling routes between a set of origins and destinations with geospatial Python and the OpenRouteService.

Level: Some experience

Required Prior Knowledge: Experience with Python and installing 3rd party modules is required. Will provide a notebook for you to follow along. Prior to the session you’ll need to request an API key from: https://api.openrouteservice.org/

DSCoV (Data Science, Computation, and Visualization) workshops are lunchtime introductions to basic data science and programming skills and tools, offered by and for Brown staff, faculty, and students (with occasional presenters from outside Brown). The workshops are interactive, so bring a laptop. All are welcome, and pizza is served. 

These workshops can be attended in person (Carney Innovation Hub, 164 Angell St, Floor 4) or on Zoom: https://brown.zoom.us/j/96158269691 

Title: Epigenomes in Flux: How Metabolism Shapes Neural Gene Expression in Addiction

Host:  Dr. Karla Kaun

Presenter: Frank Donnelly, Head of Library GIS & Data Services

Introduction to Geospatial Python with GeoPandas

This workshop provides a basic introduction to geospatial data structures and concepts, and working with GIS data files in Python with GeoPandas, a module that allows you to store and manipulate geometry in a Pandas dataframe.

Level: Beginner

Prior Knowledge: Basic experience with Python and installing 3rd party modules is helpful. Will provide a notebook so you can follow along.

DSCoV (Data Science, Computation, and Visualization) workshops are lunchtime introductions to basic data science and programming skills and tools, offered by and for Brown staff, faculty, and students (with occasional presenters from outside Brown). The workshops are interactive, so bring a laptop. All are welcome, and pizza is served. 

These workshops can be attended in person (Carney Innovation Hub, 164 Angell St, Floor 4) or on Zoom: https://brown.zoom.us/j/96158269691 

Title:  Leveraging olfaction to study social behavior in the mouse

Hosts:  Dr. Gilad Barnea & Dr. Alexander Fleischmann

Presenter: Bradford Roarr, Lead Research Software Engineer, Advanced Research Computing, Graphics, Software, and Data Core, CCV

“Introduction to the Software Carbon Intensity framework

Recent developments in AI have created new awareness of the environmental impacts of information and communications technologies. Over the past decade, researchers both in academia and industry have developed different methods quantify our digital emissions. This workshop will provide an overview of one such methodology, the Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) score. Attendees will learn to use Impact Framework, a tool for calculating SCI and other sustainability measures for their own jobs on OSCAR.

Level: Beginner

Required Prior Knowledge: Please come with NodeJS installed. Some familiarity with NodeJS and `npm` are helpful, but not required.

DSCoV (Data Science, Computation, and Visualization) workshops are lunchtime introductions to basic data science and programming skills and tools, offered by and for Brown staff, faculty, and students (with occasional presenters from outside Brown). The workshops are interactive, so bring a laptop. All are welcome, and pizza is served.

These workshops can be attended in person (Carney Innovation Hub, 164 Angell St, Floor 4) or on Zoom: https://brown.zoom.us/j/96158269691

Big tau: a tau isoform with a distinct expression pattern and pathology-resisting properties

Dr. Chloe Chung

Postdoctoral Associate, Baylor College of Medicine

Every neurodegenerative disease shows regional brain vulnerability—only certain brain regions are affected by aberrant accumulation of disease protein and associated pathology. For example, in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the microtubule-associated protein tau becomes hyperphosphorylated and aggregated in selective brain regions like the cortex and hippocampus while largely sparing other brain regions like the cerebellum and brainstem. While evaluating tau isoforms in various brain regions, I discovered that the “big tau” isoform is significantly more abundant in the cerebellum and brainstem compared to the vulnerable forebrain. Big tau, generated by the alternative splicing of the MAPT gene that includes exons 4a and 6, was previously known to be predominantly expressed in the peripheral nervous system. However, its biology has remained understudied for several decades, especially in the brain. Intrigued by big tau’s unique protein structure with an extremely longer N-terminal region, I hypothesized that big tau possesses properties distinct from regular tau isoforms. Using multiple assays and models, I demonstrated that big tau has a significantly reduced propensity for several key pathological changes that regular tau isoforms undergo in disease. Importantly, I also found an interesting inverse correlation between the level of big tau and the presence of tau pathology in the human brain. Taken together, my findings suggest that alternative splicing leading to the elevated expression level of big tau in the cerebellum and brainstem may contribute to the sparing of these brain regions from tau pathology. In my future lab, my immediate research goal is to expand investigation into big tau biology not only to strengthen our current understanding of tau biology but also to explore the idea that we can harness protective molecular players from pathology-resistant brain regions to counteract neurodegenerative diseases.

The School of Professional Studies and the Mindfulness Center at Brown are pleased to present The Evolution of Mindfulness: From MBSR to Modern Adaptations, a free, multi-part online speaker series featuring world-renowned experts and pioneers in the field.

Join us virtually on Wednesday, February 26 at Noon for Well-Being is a Skill: Neuroscience for a Healthier Mind with world-renowned neuroscientist Dr. Richard J. Davidson.

Building on the groundbreaking foundations of mindfulness-based programming, this session explores how cultivating well-being is not just a philosophy but a skill grounded in neuroscience. Dr. Richard J. Davidson delves into the concept of neuroplasticity and reveals how the brain can be trained for greater emotional resilience and mental health.

Drawing on over four decades of contemplative and scientific research, Dr. Davidson will highlight the transformative power of cultivating awareness, connection, insight and purpose. Learn practical, research-backed strategies for fostering a healthier mind, regardless of life’s challenges.

Whether you are a mindfulness practitioner, educator, healthcare professional, or simply curious about the intersection of neuroscience and well-being, this session will offer valuable insights into the future of mindfulness-based approaches to health and thriving.

About the 2025 Mindfulness Speaker Series:

Since the creation of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979, mindfulness-based programs have transformed millions of lives worldwide. Now, as our world faces unprecedented challenges and technological advances allow for more to be known about the human mind and condition, mindfulness programs are being reimagined and adapted to meet the complex needs of our time.

Join world-renowned experts and pioneers in the field for an extraordinary multi-part journey exploring how mindfulness has evolved from its revolutionary beginnings to its innovative applications today.

Discover how mindfulness programs all across the globe are being adapted to address modern challenges, from chronic stress and anxiety to societal polarization and collective trauma.

Presenter: Daniel Posmik, PhD Student, Biostatistics 

“NeoVim and Co.: Personalized Development Environments for Data Scientists”

Personalized development environments (PDEs) allow data scientists to tailor their programming setup to their specific needs. Understanding how (and why) PDE setups can make you better at coding can supercharge your productivity. This talk will focus on the text editor NeoVim. This is a very basic introduction that requires no prior experience.

Level: Beginner

Required Prior Knowledge: Come ready to participate. If you want to follow along at certain stages, I recommend having Vim or NeoVim already installed and being somewhat familiar with a terminal (or terminal emulator) of your choice.

DSCoV (Data Science, Computation, and Visualization) workshops are lunchtime introductions to basic data science and programming skills and tools, offered by and for Brown staff, faculty, and students (with occasional presenters from outside Brown). The workshops are interactive, so bring a laptop. All are welcome, and pizza is served. 

These workshops can be attended in person (Carney Innovation Hub, 164 Angell St, Floor 4) or on Zoom: https://brown.zoom.us/j/96158269691

Rachel Bailey, PhD; Center for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases, Department of Pediatrics, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Host:  Judy Liu, MD, PhD

You’re invited to join us for a Listening Circle for The Warren Alpert Medical School Community. The Listening Circle is open to learners, faculty, and staff, and it will occur virtually on Tuesday, February 18th, at 5:00 pm. Laurice Girouard, LICSW, and Kelly Holder will provide facilitation.

This Listening Circle event aims to create space for shared emotional connection about our values. This session’s topic will be “Navigating Uncertain Times.” This Listening Circle event will provide a space for attendees to connect, share their experiences, and look to the future.

Additionally, this Listening Circle will give members of the community a chance to experience this pilot program and learn ways they can become involved in the future.

The goal of the program is to:

• Create opportunities to connect and increase understanding

• Process events as a community

• Empower community members to build capacity for listening

• Cultivate empathy and a shared sense of understanding

• Build emotional connections among participants

During this large and small circle experience, you will be asked questions to explore this issue on a deeper level. You will come together with people you may or may not know. When participating in a Listening Circle, you have the responsibility to listen and an opportunity to be heard.

In preparation for this experience, we ask you to reflect on the following questions:

• Am I prepared to listen deeply to those I may not agree with?

• Am I prepared to share my experience and perspective, even if others disagree with me?

• Am I prepared to sit in discomfort?

• Do I have an apprehension about attending and, if so, can I share it with someone?

• Will I be able to address the apprehension and still participate?

• Do I have support if I am unable to continue with the process?

I hope to see you at the event. Please feel free to reach out with questions.

More Information about Listening Circles:

Our communities need opportunities to process the personal and collective impact of emotionally charged events. From the effects of COVID and racism to natural disasters and sexual abuse, we seek healthy forums in which to express our feelings and truly hear one another. With roots in Indigenous cultures around the world, listening circles provide people an opportunity to speak and listen to each other in an atmosphere of safety, decorum, and equality. Listening circles emphasize storytelling for cultivating empathy. To help people gain a shared sense of understanding and emotional connection.

Presenter: Paul Stey, Assistant CIO Research Software Engineering and Data Science Leadership, CCV

Mojo: the Programming Language for Artificial Intelligence

This workshop is meant to serve as an introduction to the Mojo programming lanugage. Mojo has been designed as a superset of Python, and is meant to be a language specifically built for artifical intelligence. No prior experience with Mojo is expected or required.

Level: Beginner

DSCoV (Data Science, Computation, and Visualization) workshops are lunchtime introductions to basic data science and programming skills and tools, offered by and for Brown staff, faculty, and students (with occasional presenters from outside Brown). The workshops are interactive, so bring a laptop. All are welcome, and pizza is served. 

Title:  Networks, Structures and Evolution of Extracellular Interactions in Driving Neuronal Connectivity

Host:  Dr. Alexander Jaworski

The Advance RI-CTR Clinical and Translational Research Seminar Series showcases clinical and translational research from across Rhode Island. This series features outstanding science from expert investigators alternating with Advance RI-CTR Pilot Projects awardees sharing their early research. Seminars are held virtually on the second Thursday of each month.

Thursday, February 13th, 2025 (12:00pm-1:00pm)

Please join us as William E. Van Nostrand, PhD, co-executive director, George & Anne Ryan Institute for Neuroscience and professor in the Department of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Rhode Island, speaks on “Molecular insights into the pathogenesis of cerebral amyloid angiopathy using novel rat models” 

Cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) is a prominent cerebral small vessel disease characterized by the deposition of fibrillar amyloid beta peptide (Aβ) within small arteries and arterioles of meninges and cortex as well as the brain capillaries. Sporadic CAA is common in the elderly brain and is a prominent pathology in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Clinically, CAA can impair cerebral blood flow and causes cerebral infarction, intracerebral macro- and micro-hemorrhages, all of which can contribute to vascular cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID).

There are two prominent forms of CAA. In CAA type-2, amyloid accumulates within the meningeal and intracortical cerebral arterioles whereas in CAA type-1 amyloid deposition occurs along the brain capillaries. In contrast to larger-vessel CAA type-2, CAA type-1 results in fibrillar amyloid penetrating the surrounding brain parenchyma which promotes a strong perivascular neuroinflammatory responses. It is suggested that early pericapillary Aβ impairs the perivascular drainage pathway, which leads to the disruption of Aβ clearance resulting in more Aβ deposition on capillary walls. A better understanding of the mechanisms involved in the two forms of CAA pathogenesis may be helpful in the design of therapeutic approaches targeting this condition.

Dr. Van Nostrand’s lab has generated novel transgenic rat models that specifically develop either CAA type-1 or type-2 and faithfully recapitulate many of the pathological features of these diseases observed in humans. In his presentation he will describe the unique features of these models and the use of proteomic approaches to better understand the common and unique cerebral protein signatures of these diseases to reveal novel biomarkers and targets for therapeutic interventions.

About Dr. Van Nostrand

Dr. Van Nostrand has been working in Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders (ADRD) research for more than 30 years. He is one of the field’s leading researchers on the pathogenesis of cerebral amyloid angiopathy, cerebral small vessel disease, and Alzheimer’s disease using biochemical, molecular, cellular and animal model approaches. Originally trained as a biochemist, Dr. Van Nostrand is recognized as the first to purify and characterize amyloid precursor protein (APP), the progenitor of amyloid-beta, a key component involved in the pathogenesis of ADRD. He is noted for developing numerous experimental animal models of disease that have provided key insights into disease processes. His current collaborations include work at Yale University; Stony Brook University; several universities in the Netherlands including Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, Leiden University Medical Center in Leiden, and Amsterdam University Medical Center in Amsterdam; and Eli Lilly in Indianapolis, IA.

A hybrid event featuring five statistically/methodologically focused flash talks for researchers in medicine, health, and social sciences:

Uncovering person-specific risk patterns in intensive longitudinal data using Dynamic Structural Equation Modeling
Gemma Wallace, PhD

Unpacking the Trends in Normative Cognitive Aging Across Two Decades
Zachary Kunicki, PhD

Momentary association between negative affect and alcohol urge in patients on methadone maintenance treatment
Jennie Min, PhD

Mapping post-discharge suicide risk: Assessing emotional and affective risk trajectories in adolescent psychiatric inpatients
Aleks Karnick, PhD

Measuring DIF: Historical Perspectives and New Frontiers in Effect Size Estimation
Rich Jones, PhD

Attend in person or register for the Zoom link. More info on talks and speakers.

Dissertation Title:  Altered Brain-Body Interactions in Chronic Pain & Other Chronic Illnesses

Advisors:  Dr. Stephanie Jones & Dr. Frederike Petzschner

Synaptic Dysfunction in Neurodegenerative Diseases: From Mechanisms to Therapeutic Strategies

Amira Latif-Hernandez, Ph.D.

Synaptic dysfunction is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD), leading to cognitive decline. My research aims to uncover the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying this dysfunction to develop targeted therapies that restore synaptic function and slow disease progression. I have applied innovative therapeutic approaches, integrating electrophysiology, transcriptomics, and molecular biology, to study activity-dependent gene expression, neurotrophin receptor signaling, and astrocytic lactate transfer to neurons - key pathways disrupted in ADRD. This seminar will explore my work on neuron/glia communication, synaptic plasticity, and transcriptomic changes in neurodegenerative diseases, offering a roadmap for novel therapeutic strategies to restore synaptic and cognitive functions.

This is the 3rd annual conference of the Brown APSA chapter, which represents a national organization dedicated to career development and community building among physician-scientists in training. APSA strives to be the student physician-scientists’ leading voice for improving educational opportunities, advancing patient-oriented research, and advocating for the future of translational medicine. We are dedicated to building a community of physician-scientists at Brown and beyond, and we aim to recognize physician-scientists advancing clinical medicine through innovation in basic science.

This year, the keynote speech will be presented by Dr. Jack A. Elias. The conference will also feature talks by distinguished researchers and current physician-scientist trainees, a senior physician-scientist panel for students enrolled in medical or graduate school, and a physician-scientist trainee panel for undergraduates and high school students applying to college.

Presenter: Ellen Duong, Lead Research Software Engineer, Advanced Research Computing Graphics, Software, and Data Core.

“Storytelling with Data Visualization”

In this workshop, we’ll learn about the fundamentals of data visualization and it’s importance in storytelling. What does the data visualization convey and how are they interpretted? We’ll take a look at real world examples of good and bad visualizations and how they’re used in storytelling to affect decision-making.

Level: Beginner

DSCoV (Data Science, Computation, and Visualization) workshops are lunchtime introductions to basic data science and programming skills and tools, offered by and for Brown staff, faculty, and students (with occasional presenters from outside Brown). The workshops are interactive, so bring a laptop. All are welcome, and pizza is served.

These workshops can be attended in person (Carney Innovation Hub, 164 Angell St, Floor 4) or on Zoom: https://brown.zoom.us/j/96158269691

Title:  Synapse formation and calcium channel function: insights from C. elegans 

Host:  Dr. Kate O’Connor-Giles

The immune receptor TREMI as a novel therapeutic target for Alzheimer’s disease

Ted Wilson, Ph.D.

Human genetics implicate defective immune responses in the development of late-onset Alzheimer disease. A decline in peripheral and brain immune cell metabolism, triggering maladaptive immune responses, is a feature of aging. The role of TREM1, a pro-inflammatory factor, in neurodegenerative diseases is unclear. This talk will show that Trem1 deficiency prevents age-dependent changes in immune cell metabolism, inflammation and hippocampal memory function in mice. Trem1 deficiency rescues age-associated declines in ribose 5-phosphate. In vitro, Trem1-deficient microglia are resistant to amyloid-β42 oligomer-induced bioenergetic changes, suggesting that amyloid-β42 oligomer stimulation disrupts homeostatic microglial metabolism and immune function via TREM1. In the 5XFAD Alzheimer’s disease mouse model, Trem1 haploinsufficiency prevents spatial memory loss, preserves homeostatic microglial morphology, and reduces neuritic dystrophy and changes in the disease-associated microglial transcriptomic signature. In aging APPSwe Alzheimer’s disease mice, Trem1 deficiency prevents hippocampal memory decline while restoring synaptic mitochondrial function and cerebral glucose uptake. In human postmortem Alzheimer disease brain, TREM1 colocalizes with Iba1+ cells around amyloid plaques and its expression is associated with Alzheimer disease clinical and neuropathological severity. These results suggest that TREM1 promotes cognitive decline in aging and in the context of amyloid pathology and identifies TREM1 novel pathway for therapeutic targeting.

CoPsy- The Michael S. Goodman Colloquium

Speaker- Dr. Marcel Binz, Helmholtz Munich

Title: Foundation models of human cognition

Abstract: Most cognitive models are domain-specific, meaning that their scope is restricted to a single type of problem. The human mind, on the other hand, does not work like this – it is a unified system whose processes are deeply intertwined. In this talk, I will present my ongoing work on foundation models of human cognition: models that cannot only predict behavior in a single domain but that instead offer a truly universal take on our mind. Furthermore, I outline my vision for how to use such behaviorally predictive models to advance our understanding of human cognition, as well as how they can be scaled to naturalistic environments.

In “Hope for Cynics: Discovering Common Ground and Building Cultures of Trust,” Jamil Zaki, professor of psychology at Stanford University, explores how empathy and connection can combat the pervasive cynicism that divides us. Drawing on research in psychology and neuroscience, Zaki demonstrates how we can bridge ideological divides, find shared values and foster trust in an era of fragmentation. He offers practical strategies for cultivating empathy, building stronger relationships and nurturing communities grounded in mutual respect. Zaki provides hope for a more unified, compassionate future.

Following Zaki’s talk, he will engage in conversation and Q&A with Brown University President Christina H. Paxson. This program is sponsored by the Office of the President and the Community Dialogue Project in Campus Life.

The first 100 attendees will receive a complimentary copy of “Hope for Cynics.” Copies will also be available for purchase through the Brown University Bookstore following the event.

Registration is required.

About the Speaker:

Jamil Zaki is a full professor of psychology at Stanford University. He and his team at the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab study social connection, including empathy, cooperation and trust, and develop tools to help people connect more effectively. In addition to publishing over 100 peer-reviewed articles, Zaki is the author of “Hope for Cynics” and “The War for Kindness.” Zaki received his B.A. in cognitive neuroscience from Boston University and his Ph.D. in psychology from Columbia University and conducted postdoctoral research at the Harvard Center for Brain Science.

About the Community Dialogue Project:

Launched in 2016 by the Division of Campus Life, Brown’s Community Dialogue
Project (CDP) helps students build the confidence, skills, and strategies needed
to productively engage in open inquiry and respectful dialogue. CDP training
modules and resources include training and skill building related to dialogue,
facilitation, and navigating disagreement. Through the CDP, students engage
with the diversity of thought and experiences within and beyond the Brown
community, building relationships across backgrounds, beliefs and viewpoints.

Because dialogue is the life blood of Brown University and core to its academic
mission, Discovery Through Dialogue has invested to expand student
participation and engagement in CDP programming, deepening students’
understanding of the world and its most pressing issues. Learn more: discovery-dialogue.brown.edu.

Students are invited to join Jamil Zaki, Stanford professor of psychology, director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab, and author of Hope for Cynics and The War for Kindness, for a one-hour workshop that dives deeper into insights from his research on social connection. This session will explore how social connection helps prevent depression, how we often underestimate others’ desire for social connection, and interventions that can address disconnection. There will also be discussion relevant to participants’ roles in supporting social connectedness.

This workshop is open to the first 50 registrants.

Staff and faculty are invited to join Jamil Zaki, Stanford professor of psychology, director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab, and author of Hope for Cynics and The War for Kindness, for a one-hour workshop that dives deeper into insights from his research on social connection. This session will explore how social connection helps prevent depression, how we often underestimate others’ desire for social connection, and interventions that can address disconnection. There will also be discussion relevant to participants’ roles in supporting social connectedness.

This workshop is open to the first 50 registrants.

Presenter: Alex Diaz-Papkovich, PhD, Postdoc at the Center for Computational Molecular Biology (CCMB) and Data Science Institute. 

Visualizing low-dimensional embeddings of high-dimensional data

This workshop will outline some of the underlying goals of dimensionality reduction and will introduce common methods, such as principal components analysis (PCA), t-distributed stochastic neighbour embedding (t-SNE), and uniform manifold approximation and projection (UMAP). It will also give code and data examples from human genetics and single-cell transcriptomics to create static and interactive visualizations in 2D.

Level: Some experience

Prior Knowledge: Familiarity with Python will be very helpful. Code will be provided so you can follow along.

DSCoV (Data Science, Computation, and Visualization) workshops are lunchtime introductions to basic data science and programming skills and tools, offered by and for Brown staff, faculty, and students (with occasional presenters from outside Brown). The workshops are interactive, so bring a laptop. All are welcome, and pizza is served. 

These workshops can be attended in person (Carney Innovation Hub, 164 Angell St, Floor 4) or on Zoom: https://brown.zoom.us/j/96158269691 

Title:  Neural engineering for epilepsy surgery

Host:  Dr. Wael Asaad

Brown Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research Special Seminar

Title: “Decoding brain aging with machine learning and single-cell spatial omics”

Eric Sun, Ph.D. Candidate

Abstract: Brain aging is a highly complex process and one of the greatest risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia. Recent spatial and single-cell omics technologies have enabled the high-dimensional profiling of complex biology including that underlying brain aging and disease. As such, new machine learning and computational methods are needed to unlock important insights from spatial and single- cell omics datasets. First, I present a large spatially resolved single-cell transcriptomics atlas of the aging mouse brain and under intervention. This atlas was integral to the development of high-resolution machine learning models (‘spatial aging clocks’) that can measure the aging of individual cells in the brain. With these spatial aging clocks, I discovered that some cell types can dramatically influence the aging of nearby cells. Next, I present new computational and statistical methods for overcoming the gene coverage limitations of existing spatial omics technologies, which have enabled the discovery of gene pathways underlying the spatial effects of brain aging.

CoPsy- The Michael S. Goodman Colloquium

Speaker- Dr. Steve Rathje, New York University

Title: The Psychology of Virality

Abstract: Throughout history, technologies—such as the printing press, television, social media, and AI—have transformed how information is created, consumed, and shared. In this talk, I will present a variety of interrelated studies that explore why information spreads online and offline, the consequences of our information diets, and how these phenomena interact with digital technologies such as social media and AI. I will begin by discussing a big data analysis exploring what goes “viral” on social media and why widely shared information is often not widely liked (a phenomenon I call the “paradox of virality”). Then, I will present results from digital field experiments that demonstrate that unfollowing just a few hyperpartisan social media influencers can reduce out-party animosity and improve online behavior—with effects lasting for at least six months. Afterwards, I will discuss a series of online experiments showing that incentivizing accuracy can improve people’s ability to correctly discern between true and false news—yet making partisan identity motivations salient can reduce accuracy and increase intentions to share false information. I will then discuss how I am exploring these questions on a global scale, using a 23-country social media field experiment and a 56-country analysis of social media data using large-language models. Finally, I will outline my future directions, which explore how information spreads offline, how it spread historically, how technology impacts collective behavior, and how accuracy and identity motivations influence how people interact with AI. The ultimate goal of this work is to provide a theoretical account explaining how people share, seek out, and are impacted by information, and how these processes interact with technology.

Title:  Windows into OCD: Translational Insights from Humans and Mice

Host:  Dr. Eric Morrow

Brown Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research Special Seminar

Title: Big tau: a tau isoform with a distinct expression pattern

and pathology-resisting properties

Dr. Chloe Chung

Postdoctoral Associate, Baylor College of Medicine

Every neurodegenerative disease shows regional brain vulnerability—only certain brain regions are affected by aberrant accumulation of disease protein and associated pathology. For example, in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the microtubule-associated protein tau becomes hyperphosphorylated and aggregated in selective brain regions like the cortex and hippocampus while largely sparing other brain regions like the cerebellum and brainstem. While evaluating tau isoforms in various brain regions, I discovered that the “big tau” isoform is significantly more abundant in the cerebellum and brainstem compared to the vulnerable forebrain. Big tau, generated by the alternative splicing of the MAPT gene that includes exons 4a and 6, was previously known to be predominantly expressed in the peripheral nervous system. However, its biology has remained understudied for several decades, especially in the brain. Intrigued by big tau’s unique protein structure with an extremely longer N-terminal region, I hypothesized that big tau possesses properties distinct from regular tau isoforms. Using multiple assays and models, I demonstrated that big tau has a significantly reduced propensity for several key pathological changes that regular tau isoforms undergo in disease. Importantly, I also found an interesting inverse correlation between the level of big tau and the presence of tau pathology in the human brain. Taken together, my findings suggest that alternative splicing leading to the elevated expression level of big tau in the cerebellum and brainstem may contribute to the sparing of these brain regions from tau pathology. In my future lab, my immediate research goal is to expand investigation into big tau biology not only to strengthen our current understanding of tau biology but also to explore the idea that we can harness protective molecular players from pathology-resistant brain regions to counteract neurodegenerative diseases.

CoPsy- The Michael S. Goodman Colloquium

Speaker- Dr. Thomas Costello, American Unniversity

Title: The new behavioral science of belief change?

Abstract: Our social institutions — science, liberal democracy, trial by jury — assume that humans change their minds in response to sufficiently compelling information, allowing us to access truth via deliberation. Yet across the behavioral sciences, interventions that seek to change minds (e.g., shift attitudes and beliefs, correct misinformation) by leveraging factual information are notoriously ineffective, especially for salient topics related to ideology, identity, and coalitional interests. I will argue that much of this inefficacy is not attributable to motivated reasoning (i.e., the typical explanation for humans’ unwillingness to change their minds) but rather that individuals’ belief systems are sufficiently heterogeneous and complex to confound one-size-fits-all attempts at persuasive argumentation. Mounting genuinely compelling arguments at scale is trickier than it appears. My work solves this problem by leveraging a novel pipeline for information-focused interactions between humans and generative AI models that (a) measures participants’ beliefs in great detail and (b) delivers high-density factual argumentation (which proves crucial for effectiveness) that bears precisely on said beliefs via an extended human <-> AI dialogue. These interactions dramatically and durably reduce false beliefs, such as conspiracy theories (d = 1.1, with effects enduring for 2 months) and vaccine skepticism (d = 0.78), shift anti-immigrant prejudice (d = 0.20), and increase voting intentions (d = 0.85) — among other promising findings. I will share these findings and articulate a vision for a behavioral science of belief change that recognizes beliefs as high-dimensional and heterogeneous using both computational cognitive science and emerging technologies like AI to account for this complexity. This approach sheds new light on the human mind while helping solve enduring social challenges.

Brown Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research Special Seminar

Title: Microglia uptake and spread of pathological tau in Alzheimer’s disease and primary tauopathy

Dr. Sarah Hopp, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

University of Texas Health San Antonio 

Sidney Frank Hall, Marcuvitz Auditorium, SFH220

Wednesday, January 15 

4:00-5:00 PM

CoPsy- The Michael S. Goodman Colloquium

Speaker- Dr. Marina Dubova, Santa Fe Institute

Title: Cognitive and computational mechanisms of discovery

Abstract: To understand and navigate our world, both individuals and scientific communities create simplifying representations, such as concepts and theories. How do we construct useful representations from our experiences, and how do we use these representations to guide our learning? In this talk, I discuss empirical research on the mechanisms of human concept learning, highlighting the ease with which we adopt new, even arbitrary, conceptualizations. I illustrate how these acquired concepts instantly shape how we perceive and explore the world. For example, I show that our perception of objects becomes biased by our conceptual needs and our knowledge about these objects. I demonstrate that similar mechanisms are at play when scientific conceptualizations, such as the DSM in psychology and the periodic table in chemistry, guide scientific exploration. Then, I discuss the double-edged nature of theory-guided discovery—although conceptualizations can efficiently steer us towards new experiences that further refine our knowledge, they can also lead our exploration astray. I present a computational model of scientific discovery in which agents conduct experiments, build theories, and share results to advance collective understanding of the world. The model reveals that when new experiments are guided by existing theoretical frameworks, scientific communities risk missing important aspects of the world not yet captured by their theories. I conclude by reviewing my current and future research that integrates cognitive psychology, machine learning, and philosophy of science to enhance our understanding of how theories and observations can inform each other to support—rather than hinder—human learning and scientific progress.

CoPsy- The Michael S. Goodman Colloquium

Speaker- Dr. Ella Striem-Amit, Georgetown University

Title: Cortical plasticity and cognitive representations: Lessons from studying people born blind, deaf, or
without hands

Abstract:  What is the balance between nature and nurture in determining the function of cortical areas? A key way to answer this question is by studying people with congenital deprivation. What plasticity is evident when a brain area is deprived from birth of its typical input or outputs? And what can this reveal about
the underlying processing in the typical brain? Last, do different individuals with deprivation exhibit similar patterns of plasticity, or is there diversity in how their brains adapt?

First I will present a series of studies examining the role of motor experience in the neural representations of actions in people born without hands. We found that specific hand-selective brain regions do not exclusively represent motor control of the hands; instead, they relate to the actions performed with them. These higher-level representations allow us to perform comparable actions with different body parts. Drawing parallels across insights gained from studies of individuals born blind or deaf, I’ll argue that studying such special populations allows tracking the cognitive level of representation of different brain regions and their hierarchies.

Furthermore, I will show evidence for a larger diversity of brain connectivity patterns across individuals born with blindness or deafness than typically developed individuals. These findings reveal the variability of alternative developmental trajectories for the human cortex, and its dependence on experience. Additionally, they open new questions about the functions of the deprived cortex and how it may affect the restoration of function on an individual level.

Overall, my research demonstrates how studying congenital deprivation across domains provides valuable insights into neural representations, development, and plasticity in both typical and deprived brains, and highlights potential avenues for sensory and motor restoration.

Title:  Robust and Flexible Control of Synaptic Heterogeneity in the Auditory System

Host:  Dr. Alexander Jaworski

CoPsy- The Michael S. Goodman Colloquium

Speaker- Dr. Leyla Isik, Johns Hopkins University

Title: Seeing social interactions

Abstract: Humans see the world in rich social detail. We effortlessly recognize not only objects and people in our environment, but also social interactions between people. The ability to perceive and understand others’ interactions is critical to function in our social world, yet the underlying neural computations remain poorly understood. In this talk, I will first argue that social interaction perception should be studied with the same computational vision tools that are now widely applied to other areas of vision, like scene and object recognition. I will then present new research using a large-scale, naturalistic video dataset and condition-rich fMRI experiment, demonstrating that social interaction information is extracted hierarchically by the visual system along the recently proposed lateral visual pathway. In ongoing work with this same dataset, we find that unlike static scene and object vision, current AI vision models do a poor job of matching human behavior and neural responses to dynamic, social scenes. To help close this gap, we developed a novel graph neural network model, SocialGNN, that instantiates insights from cognitive (neuro)science. SocialGNN reproduces human judgments of social interactions in both controlled and natural videos using only visual information, without any explicit model of agents’ minds or the physical world. Critically, the model’s relational, graph-based structure and processing are required for accurate social interaction recognition. Together, this research suggests that social interaction recognition is a core human ability that relies on structured visual representations, highlighting critical future directions for human-aligned AI.

“Probing nuclear structure and function with novel genomic tools”

MCB Special Seminar presented by

Sofia Quinodoz, Ph.D.

Princeton University

Wednesday, January 8, 2025

10:00 AM

Marcuvitz Auditorium, SFH 220

Please join the Pathobiology Graduate Program for the final examination of Ryan O’Rourke for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Pathobiology. The candidate will present himself for examination on the dissertation entitled “Alzheimer’s Disease Risk Factor BIN1 Promotes Tau Secretion via Secretory Autophagy”. 

Title: Dynamic Algorithmic Networks of Visual Categorizations

Host:  Dr. David Sheinberg

CoPsy- The Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Lecture

Speaker- Dr. Frederike Petzschner, Brown University

Title: From Mind to Body: Mechanisms of Perception and Control in Mental Health

Abstract: The brain’s remarkable ability to infer and predict is often studied through external sensory and reward signals, yet a vast, overlooked source of information lies within the body. This talk explores how computational frameworks of perception and action—rooted in classical studies of inference and learning—can be expanded to integrate interoceptive signals. By incorporating the body into these models, we uncover novel insights into cognitive processes and mental health, offering a more complete picture of how the mind navigates the world and itself.

CoPsy- The Michael S. Goodman ’74 Memorial Lecture

Speaker- Dr. Natalia Vélez, Princeton University

Title: Thinking Collaboratively

Abstract: Since the cognitive revolution, psychologists have developed formal theories of cognition by thinking of the mind as a computer. This metaphor, however, is typically applied to individual minds. Humans rarely think in isolation. We are curiously dependent on culturally transmitted skills and knowledge, and we excel at collaborating with others. In this talk, I will propose that—rather than studying the human mind as an isolated computer—we can instead imagine each mind within a collaboration as a node in a distributed system. I will present two lines of work, which each provide a complementary view of how humans think together. The first line of work takes stock of the basic psychological processes that enable collaboration. I will present evidence that the human capacity to understand other minds—or mentalizing—enables us to navigate key challenges of collaboration, including effectively communicating with collaborators and building collaborative teams. The second line of work examines how communities create conditions that foster collaboration. I will present results on the rise and fall of communities in One Hour One Life, a multiplayer online game where players build technologically advanced cities from scratch. Together, these projects suggest that human collaboration is powered not only by our ability to understand the social world, but also by our ability to actively reshape the social world by forming teams. I will conclude by proposing a theoretical framework to study how teams distribute tasks, information, and decisions over many minds.

Title: Integration of Olfactory and Gustatory Information in Schistocerca Americana

Advisor: Dr. Mark Stopfer, NIH

Title:  Development of microscopes for voltage imaging

Host:  Dr. Ahmed Abdelfattah

Join us for The Carney Institute’s holiday party! 

Friends and family are welcome to join in on the celebration — please be sure to include them in your RSVP! We’ll have plenty of food, drinks, music and activities to enjoy throughout the evening. 

Join us for a day of short presentations from local scientists and clinicians focused on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, followed by a brainstorming session among members of the research community.

Join us for the Advance RI-CTR NVivo Virtual Drop In Session (Mac Based) with Rochelle Rosen, PhD and Ryan Lantini, MA and Grace Smith, MA.

The drop-in session will be on Tuesday, December 10th, 2024 from 9:30 - 10:30 AM ET. This is an open session where you may ask specific questions about the NVivo software and its applications to your study.

You can also join the drop-in session to learn from the questions asked by others. 

Learn more about NVivo and other qualitative resources, at the Advance RI-CTR Qualitative Research Resources page.

*Note: If you have confidential study questions, please complete a service request form on our website.

If you have a question, please contact: AdvanceRI@brown.edu.

Title:  A role for Trio and CRMP2 in limiting axon branching

Advisor:  Dr. Katherine Roche, NIH

Title:  The nonlinear dynamics of taste processing

Host: Seneca Scott, Graduate Student; Moore Lab

Join us for the Virtual Advance RI-CTR Introduction to NVivo Workshop (Mac Based) with Rochelle Rosen, PhD and Grace Smith, MA.

This workshop will be on Thursday, December 5th, 2024 (12:00 - 1:00 PM ET) with an optional Q&A from 1:00 AM to 1:30 PM. This workshop will be a general overview and introduction on the NVivo software and its potential uses. 

Learn more about NVivo and other qualitative resources, at the Advance RI-CTR Qualitative Research Resources page.

*Note: If you have confidential study questions, please complete a service request form on our website.

If you have a question, please contact: AdvanceRI@brown.edu.

Please join us to thank Professor Kimberly Mowry

 for 15 Years of Service as MCB Chair!

Tuesday, December 3rd

4:00 - 5:30 pm

Maddock Alumni Center, Brian Room, 38 Brown Street

DSCoV (Data Science, Computation, and Visualization) workshops are lunchtime introductions to basic data science and programming skills and tools, offered by and for Brown staff, faculty, and students (with occasional presenters from outside Brown). The workshops are interactive, so bring a laptop. All are welcome, and pizza is served. 

Is your machine learning model ethical?

Presenter: Andras Zsom, Assistant Professor of the Practice of Data Science, Director of Graduate Studies, DSI.

Machine learning models have a significant impact on everyone’s lives. They decide whether you get approved for credit cards, loans, or mortgages. They can diagnose diseases, calculate your credit score, moderate content on social media, determine if your insurance claim should be approved, predict your learning outcomes, and much more.

However, these models also raise important ethical concerns. They can perpetuate biases found in their training data, which can lead to unfair or discriminatory outcomes. They can be opaque, making it difficult to understand how decisions are made which undermines trust in these systems. These issues highlight the importance of developing and deploying machine learning models ethically. By focusing on fairness, transparency, and respect for individual rights, we can ensure equitable treatment for everyone affected by these models.

We will begin by reviewing how classification models work and why they are so important. Next, we will discuss the considerations developers should keep in mind to create ethical machine learning frameworks and to minimize harm. Specifically, we will cover the importance of avoiding proxies or putting people into buckets, ensuring transparency and interpretability, continually retraining models as new data comes in, and allowing individuals to dispute a model’s predictions.

Required Prior Knowledge: Familiarity with regression and classification models is beneficial.

These workshops can also be attended on Zoom: https://brown.zoom.us/j/96158269691 

Brown University Speakers: Alexander Fleischmann, PhD; Petra Klinge, MD, PhD; Konstantina Svokos, DO, MS and Maria Guglielmo, MD

Host:  Eric Morrow, MD, PhD

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Ariana Albanese, PhD: “A rapid approach to qualitative analysis”

Use of qualitative methods is key to effectively answering implementation science research questions. However, often rapid qualitative approaches are preferred in implementation science given the need for collected data to quickly inform decision-making. In this talk, Dr. Albanese will introduce a rapid approach to qualitative analysis which has been utilized in several implementation science projects.

About the Speaker

Dr. Ariana Albanese is an Assistant Professor and member of the Brown Research on Implementation and Dissemination to Guide Evidence Use (BRIDGE) Program. Dr. Albanese received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Drexel University in 2022. She completed her residency training and postdoctoral fellowship at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University.

Her program of research is focused on improving behavioral health outcomes, with a particular focus on behavioral health during pregnancy and postpartum. As an implementation science methodologist, her research has covered various content areas and employed multiple methods, such as community engagement, formative evaluation, the selection and application of implementation theories, models, and frameworks, and the assessment of implementation outcomes. She also possesses methodological expertise in qualitative and mixed methods, including rapid qualitative methods which are often used in implementation science.

Title:  From Lineages to Circuits and Behaviors

Hosts:  Dr. Karla Kaun & Dr. Kate O’Connor-Giles

Wednesday, November 13th, 2024 9:00am-10:00am

Join us for a virtual Advance RI-CTR NVivo Drop-In Session (PC Based) with Dr. Rochelle Rosen, Grace Smith, MA, & Ryan Lantini.

This is an open session where you may ask specific questions about NVivo software and its applications to your study. You can also join the drop-in session to learn from others’ questions.

To learn more about NVivo and other qualitative resources, please go to the Advance RI-CTR Qualitative Research Resources page.

*Note: If you have confidential study questions, please complete a service request form. Email us with questions at advanceri@brown.edu.

DSCoV (Data Science, Computation, and Visualization) workshops are lunchtime introductions to basic data science and programming skills and tools, offered by and for Brown staff, faculty, and students (with occasional presenters from outside Brown). The workshops are interactive, so bring a laptop. All are welcome, and pizza is usually served. 

Introduction to Efficient LLMs: Training and Deployment without Massive GPU Resources

Presenter: Omri S. Suissa, Visiting Scientist, DSI, Conversational AI lab

Discover cutting-edge methods for efficiently training and deploying LLMs without needing an extensive GPU cluster. Facing limited GPU availability? Want to shrink an LLM to run on edge devices? Eager to optimize your training workflow so you can “train an LLM and be home by dinner”? This workshop will equip you with practical strategies to overcome these challenges.

Level: Some Experience

Required Prior Knowledge: Familiarity with training and fine-tuning transformer models; Proficiency in the Python programming language.

These workshops can also be attended on Zoom: https://brown.zoom.us/j/96158269691

Title:  Neuro-vascular interactions in the brain

Host:  Dr. Christopher Moore

Join us for the Virtual Advance RI-CTR Introduction to NVivo Workshop (PC Based) with Rochelle Rosen, PhD and Ryan Lantini, MA

This workshop will be on Wednesday, November 6th, 2024 (9:00 - 10:00 AM EST) with an optional Q&A from 10:00 AM to 10:30 AM. This workshop will be a general overview and introduction on the NVivo software and its potential uses. Learn more about NVivo and other qualitative resources, at the Advance RI-CTR Qualitative Research Resources page.

*Note: If you have confidential study questions, please complete a service request form on our website.

If you have a question, please contact: AdvanceRI@brown.edu.

Title: Thalamocortical deficits in Schizophrenia

Host: Dr. Stephanie Jones

Title:  Neural Circuit Dynamics Underlying Perceptual Decisions

Host:  Dr. Carlos Vargas-Irwin

Join the Data Science Institute for a lunch with postdocs from across the university involved in data or computational science. This lunch will be an opportunity to connect with other postdocs and colleagues who do computational work or think about data in interesting ways. If this sounds like you, then please join us on October 22 at Noon at the Data Science Institute!

Please RSVP here by Oct 16 if you are interested in attending so that we order enough food.

If you would like to join the DSI-affiliated postdoc mailing list to be in the loop about data science opportunities for postdocs and DSI events, sign up here.

The Data Science Institute at Brown engages people across campus and beyond to:

• Educate all in data fluency and advanced area-specific applications of data science methods
• Stimulate large-scale multidisciplinary research developing and applying data science methods to multiple data modalities.
• Ensure that the power of data be leveraged toward a more equitable society.

DSI is looking to connect with postdocs from all disciplines across campus.

DSCoV (Data Science, Computation, and Visualization) workshops are lunchtime introductions to basic data science and programming skills and tools, offered by and for Brown staff, faculty, and students (with occasional presenters from outside Brown). The workshops are interactive, so bring a laptop. All are welcome, and pizza is usually served. 

Held every Friday at noon at the Carney Innovation Space, 164 Angell Street, Floor 4.

Color choices in data visualization design

Presenter: Reuben Fischer-Baum, Adjunct Lecturer at the Data Science Institute, Graphics Editor at the Washington Post. 

Many charts and figures could be improved with better color choices. This hands-on workshop will include discussion of discrete vs. sequential vs. diverging scales, bucketed vs. continuous gradients, single-hue vs. multi-hue gradients, lightness adjustments, accessibility considerations, thematic color choices, and more!

Required Prior Knowledge: None

These workshops can also be attended on Zoom: https://brown.zoom.us/j/96158269691

———–

Join the Brown Data Science Institute for the 2024 Women in Data Science (WiDS) Providence Conference on Oct 18 at the Petteruti Lounge. 

WiDS is a global initiative that empowers and supports women in the field of data science, and our event is the perfect opportunity to learn, grow and connect with like-minded individuals. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert, regardless of gender, this event has something for you. 

The WiDS Providence 2024 conference will include a keynote speaker, panels on careers in data science, lunch with the speakers, and lightning talks.

If you are interested in giving a lightning talk during this event, please fill out this Google form in addition to RSVPing below. We are looking for ~3–5-minute presentations, with no more than ~3 slides and a wide range of research topics, so don’t hesitate to submit your work. Whether it’s a work in progress, an internship or summer project, a thesis, or your postdoc research, we want to hear from a diversity of work! We encourage all undergraduate and graduate students, as well as postdocs/staff, to submit.

Schedule

Event Program (including panelist bios)

Robert Campus Center, Petteruti Lounge

Organizing Team

(*WiDS co-ambassadors):

• Faculty Chair:Karianne Bergen*
• Speakers & Panelists:Hyeyeon Hwang, Xiran Liu*, Cecile Meier-Scherling, Amina Tassallah, & Dafne Zorzetto*
• Career Panel & Networking:Johanna Koebel & Anushka Narayanan
• Lightning talks:Sarah Esenther* & Sonam Sherpa
• DSI events coordinator:Aspen Stuart-Cunningham

This is a full day event and will include lunch. Attendees can attend all or only some sessions as works with their schedules. 

Please RSVP in advance (below).

Continuing our Seminar Series this semester, BioCON is excited to be hosting Dr. Sendurai Mani, Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Associate Director of Translational Oncology at Brown University Legorreta Cancer Center. Dr. Mani is a research professor at Brown and a founder of multiple therapeutics companies. He will be discussing his career path and the intersection of academia and industry.

When: Thursday, October 17th from 5pm - 6pm Where: Eddy Auditorium (BioMed 291 171 Meeting Street) and on Zoom This event will be catered by Kabob and Curry!

Please RSVP here

Title:  Glial diversity and functions in the nervous system

Host:  Dr. Anne Hart

Join us for the Advance RI-CTR NVivo Virtual Drop In Session (Mac Based) with Rochelle Rosen, PhD and Ryan Lantini, MA and Grace Smith, MA.

The drop-in session will be on Tuesday, October 15th, 2024 from 10:00 - 11:00 AM ET. This is an open session where you may ask specific questions about the NVivo software and its applications to your study.

You can also join the drop-in session to learn from the questions asked by others. 

Learn more about NVivo and other qualitative resources, at the Advance RI-CTR Qualitative Research Resources page.

*Note: If you have confidential study questions, please complete a service request form on our website.

If you have a question, please contact: AdvanceRI@brown.edu.

DSCoV (Data Science, Computation, and Visualization) workshops are lunchtime introductions to basic data science and programming skills and tools, offered by and for Brown staff, faculty, and students (with occasional presenters from outside Brown). The workshops are interactive, so bring a laptop. All are welcome, and pizza is usually served. 

Earth data and visualization

Presenter: Sonam Sherpa, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Department of Earth, Environment, and Planetary Sciences (DEEPS) and Institute at Brown for Environment and Society (IBES) 

Earth observing data are globally available and can be used to tackle current environmental problems. This workshop consists of discussions and hands-on exercises to visualize and analyze these data through MATLAB programming.

Required Prior Knowledge: Some familiarity with Matlab might be helpful but not needed.

These workshops can also be attended on Zoom: https://brown.zoom.us/j/96158269691

Join us for the Virtual Advance RI-CTR Introduction to NVivo Workshop (Mac Based) with Rochelle Rosen, PhD and Grace Smith, MA.

This workshop will be on Tuesday, October 8th, 2024 (11:00 AM- 12:00 PM ET) with an optional Q&A from 12:00 AM to 12:30 AM. This workshop will be a general overview and introduction on the NVivo software and its potential uses. 

Learn more about NVivo and other qualitative resources, at the Advance RI-CTR Qualitative Research Resources page.

*Note: If you have confidential study questions, please complete a service request form on our website.

If you have a question, please contact: AdvanceRI@brown.edu.

Title:  Cell-Circuit-Network Level Mechanisms supporting Efficient Attentional Control in Primate Fronto-Striatal Circuits

Host:  Dr. Eunjeong Lee

The parents’ journey through drug development: Making the impossible possible for Angelman Syndrome, Dr. Allyson Berent

and 

BDNF signaling in Angelman Syndrome: Impact and next steps, Dr. John Marshall

Host: Dr. Alvin Huang; Center for Translational Neuroscience

CoPsy- The Friedman Family Lecture in Cognitive and Psychological Sciences

DSCoV (Data Science, Computation, and Visualization) workshops are lunchtime introductions to basic data science and programming skills and tools, offered by and for Brown staff, faculty, and students (with occasional presenters from outside Brown). The workshops are interactive, so bring a laptop. All are welcome, and pizza is usually served. 

GPT as RA: A guide to using GPT to classify free text

Presenter: Alyssa Bilinski, Peterson Family Assistant Professor of Health Policy, Assistant Professor of Health Services, Policy and Practice and Biostatistics

How can GPT help in conducting research? A workshop on using GPT for text classification – we’ll start with the basics of setup and workflow. Then we’ll go step-by-step through training, troubleshooting, and validating for high quality results. We’ll finish by briefly discussing advanced topics: actor-critic algorithms and calibration.

Required Prior Knowledge: We’ll assume you can follow Python code – but you won’t have to write your own!

These workshops can also be attended on Zoom: https://brown.zoom.us/j/96158269691

A HYBRID EVENT
Friday, September 20, 2024

LIVE IN PERSON
Providence Marriott Downtown
1 Orms Street
Providence, RI 02904

LIVE-STREAMED
Zoom Webinar

Now in its fourth year, the Rhode Island Stroke Symposium seeks to integrate the most advanced research and medical knowledge in the treatment of stroke and provide a forum for dissemination of that knowledge. The purpose of the program is to provide an update on state-of-the-art acute stroke evaluation treatment as practiced at a Comprehensive Stroke Center.

Rhode Island Hospital is the oldest Comprehensive Stroke Center in New England and a high-volume academic medical center that provides care for patients with acute ischemic stroke, intracerebral hemorrhage, and subarachnoid hemorrhage. In this program, participants will be exposed to a variety of disciplines including stroke, neuro-interventional radiology, emergency medicine, stroke nursing, advanced practice care, and neurorehabilitation. The goal of the activity is to enhance the care of the stroke patient in Rhode Island and the wider New England region.

Title:  Illuminating Synaptic Mechanisms of Parkinson’s Disease Using the Lamprey Model

Host:  Dr. Audrey Medeiros

DSCoV (Data Science, Computation, and Visualization) workshops are lunchtime introductions to basic data science and programming skills and tools, offered by and for Brown staff, faculty, and students (with occasional presenters from outside Brown). The workshops are interactive, so bring a laptop. All are welcome, and pizza is usually served. 

Introduction to Programming in Python

Presenter: Ellen Duong, Lead Research Software; Advanced Research Computing; Graphics, Software, and Data Core, Center for Computation and Visualization.

Join our hands-on workshop to learn the basics of Python programming, perfect for beginners. You’ll gain a solid foundation in Python syntax, variables, data types, loops, conditional statements, and control flow. Whether you’re a student, researcher, or processional, this workshop will equip you with essential programming skills.

Required Prior Knowledge: None

These workshops can also be attended on Zoom: https://brown.zoom.us/j/96158269691

Title:  Probing mechanisms of sensory plasticity from behavior to calcium dynamics

Advisor:  Dr. Diane Lipscombe

Title: Chloride homeostasis as a new therapeutic target; from chronic pain to neurodegenerative diseases

Host: Dr. Diane Lipscombe

Join us for the Virtual Advance RI-CTR Introduction to NVivo Workshop (PC Based) with Rochelle Rosen, PhD and Ryan Lantini, MA

This workshop will be on Thursday, September 12th, 2024 (9:00 - 10:00 AM EST) with an optional Q&A from 10:00 AM to 10:30 AM. This workshop will be a general overview and introduction on the NVivo software and its potential uses. Learn more about NVivo and other qualitative resources, at the Advance RI-CTR Qualitative Research Resources page.

*Note: If you have confidential study questions, please complete a service request form on our website.

If you have a question, please contact: AdvanceRI@brown.edu.

Title:  Targeting retrotransposon activation in Alzheimer’s disease and related tauopathies:  From discovery to clinical trials

Hosts:  Dr. Eric Morrow & Dr. Judy Liu; Center for Translational Neuroscience

Join the CoPsy Department for our annual Kick-Off event at the Metcalf Friedman Auditorium. As we gear up for the new academic year, you’ll hear inspiring talks from our faculty and get a glimpse of exciting research in our department.

Unfortunately, registration for this event has reached full capacity due to venue size limitations. If you have not received an invitation to this event, don’t worry! You will be invited to the next Postdoc Welcome Event on Monday, November 11, 2024. The invitation for the next event will be released on Thursday, September 5, 2024. 

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The Office of University Postdoctoral Affairs (OUPA) invites newly appointed postdoctoral scholars at Brown to a welcome event and academic orientation on Wednesday, September 4, 2024, from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m.

The event is a great chance to meet other new postdocs at Brown and the OUPA staff. It will include a presentation from OUPA director Audra Van Wart about planning a successful postdoc and an overview of resources available to postdocs at Brown.

Light refreshments will be provided (starting at 9:45 AM). OUPA will also give attendees free swag, including a canvas tote bag, notebook, mug, and lanyard.

Please note that recently appointed postdocs will receive a direct email invitation to this event with location details. This event is specifically for recently appointed postdocs at Brown and is not open to the general public or other members of the Brown community. 

Title: Experimental Paradigms for the Study of Neural and Vascular Input to Primary Sensory Cortex and Associated Behavior

Advisor: Dr. Christopher Moore

Join us for the Advance RI-CTR NVivo Virtual Drop In Session (Mac Based) with Rochelle Rosen, PhD and Ryan Lantini, MA and Grace Smith, MA.

The drop-in session will be on Tuesday, August 13th, 2024 from 10:00 - 11:00 AM ET. This is an open session where you may ask specific questions about the NVivo software and its applications to your study.

You can also join the drop-in session to learn from the questions asked by others. 

Learn more about NVivo and other qualitative resources, at the Advance RI-CTR Qualitative Research Resources page.

*Note: If you have confidential study questions, please complete a service request form on our website.

If you have a question, please contact: AdvanceRI@brown.edu.

Join us for the Virtual Advance RI-CTR Introduction to NVivo Workshop (Mac Based) with Rochelle Rosen, PhD and Grace Smith, MA.

This workshop will be on Tuesday, August 6th, 2024 (10:00 - 11:00 AM ET) with an optional Q&A from 11:00 AM to 11:30 AM. This workshop will be a general overview and introduction on the NVivo software and its potential uses.

Learn more about NVivo and other qualitative resources, at the Advance RI-CTR Qualitative Research Resources page.

*Note: If you have confidential study questions, please complete a service request form on our website.

If you have a question, please contact: AdvanceRI@brown.edu.

Title:  Inhibition-driven dynamics of stimulus representation and deviance detection in the neocortical column

Advisor:  Dr. Stephanie Jones

Join us for the Advance RI-CTR NVivo Virtual Drop-In Session (PC Based) with Dr. Rochelle Rosen, PhD and Ryan Lantini, MA.

This drop-in session will be on Tuesday, July 16th, 2024 from 10:00 - 11:00 AM ET. This is an open session where you may ask specific questions about the NVivo software and its applications to your study.

You can also join the drop-in session to learn from the questions asked by others. 

Learn more about NVivo and other qualitative resources, at the Advance RI-CTR Qualitative Research Resources page.

*Note: If you have confidential study questions, please complete a service request form on our website.

If you have a question, please contact: AdvanceRI@brown.edu.

Join us for the Virtual Advance RI-CTR Introduction to NVivo Workshop (PC Based) with Rochelle Rosen, PhD and Ryan Lantini, MA.

This workshop will be on Tuesday, July 9th, 2024 (10:00 - 11:00 AM ET) with an optional Q&A from 11:00 AM to 11:30 AM. This workshop will be a general overview and introduction on the NVivo software and its potential uses. 

Learn more about NVivo and other qualitative resources, at the Advance RI-CTR Qualitative Research Resources page.

*Note: If you have confidential study questions, please complete a service request form on our website.

If you have a question, please contact: AdvanceRI@brown.edu.

The Carney Institute for Brain Science invites you to our Summer BBQ on Thursday, June 27, from 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM. Weather permitting, the event will take place on Pembroke Green North, in between Alumnae Hall and Smith-Buonanno Hall. Join us for an afternoon of grilling, ice cream and lawn games!

Join us for the Advance RI-CTR NVivo Virtual Drop-In Session (Mac Based) with Rochelle Rosen, PhD and Ryan Lantini, MA and Grace Smith, MA.

The drop-in session will be on Wednesday, June 26th, 2024 from 12:00 - 1:00 PM ET. This is an open session where you may ask specific questions about the NVivo software and its applications to your study.

You can also join the drop-in session to learn from the questions asked by others. 

Learn more about NVivo and other qualitative resources, at the Advance RI-CTR Qualitative Research Resources page.

*Note: If you have confidential study questions, please complete a service request form on our website.

If you have a question, please contact: AdvanceRI@brown.edu.

Join us for the Virtual Advance RI-CTR Introduction to NVivo Workshop (Mac Based) with Dr. Rochelle Rosen and Grace Smith, MA.

This workshop will be on Monday, June 17th, 2024 (12:00 - 1:00 PM ET) with an optional Q&A from 1:00 PM to 1:30 PM. This workshop will be a general overview and introduction on the NVivo software and its potential uses. 

Learn more about NVivo and other qualitative resources, at the Advance RI-CTR Qualitative Research Resources page.

*Note: If you have confidential study questions, please complete a service request form on our website.

If you have a question, please contact: AdvanceRI@brown.edu.

Title:  Mechanistic and population-based insights from computationally modeling effortful cost/benefit decision making

Advisors:  Dr. Michael Frank & Dr. Wael Asaad

We hope that you will join us for our annual Spring Retreat on Thursday, June 13th, from 1PM-5PM in LMM 107 at 70 Ship Street. The full schedule will be posted as we get closer to the retreat. Social to follow in the Ship Street Courtyard. 

Please join us for an in-person open house for the Advancing Research Careers (ARC) program. Come learn about the structure of the program and resources available to ARC scholars. We’ll hear from program leadership and current ARC scholars will share about their experience with plenty of time for questions.

A two-year, NINDS-funded program, ARC seeks to promote the research careers of women and persons historically excluded due to ethnicity and race (PEERs) in brain sciences. Participants benefit from financial support, mentorship and professional development tailored specifically to each person. 

For a full description of the ARC program, including how to apply, click here. Applications are due on or before July 1, 2024.

Join us for the Advance RI-CTR NVivo Virtual Drop-In Session (PC Based) with Dr. Rochelle Rosen and Ryan Lantini, MA.

This drop-in session will be on Tuesday, May 14th, 2024 from 1:30 - 2:30 PM ET. This is an open session where you may ask specific questions about the NVivo software and its applications to your study.

You can also join the drop-in session to learn from the questions asked by others. 

Learn more about NVivo and other qualitative resources, at the Advance RI-CTR Qualitative Research Resources page.

*Note: If you have confidential study questions, please complete a service request form on our website.

If you have a question, please contact: AdvanceRI@brown.edu.

Title:  Transcriptional Responses to Neuronal Stress in Disease and Injury

Advisor:  Dr. Claire LePichon, NIH

Title:  From the Chick Retina to CM-EA1 and CM-EA2:  A Neuroprotection Story

Host:  Dr. Carlos Aizenman

Seminar sponsorship provided by the Frank Invitational Seminar Fund,
made possible by a 2006 endowment gift from the Sidney E. Frank Foundation

Join us for the Virtual Advance RI-CTR Introduction to NVivo Workshop (PC Based) with Rochelle Rosen, PhD and Ryan Lantini, MA

This workshop will be on Thursday, May 9th, 2024 (1:30 - 2:30 PM EST) with an optional Q&A from 2:30 PM to 3:00 PM. This workshop will be a general overview and introduction on the NVivo software and its potential uses. Learn more about NVivo and other qualitative resources, at the Advance RI-CTR Qualitative Research Resources page.

*Note: If you have confidential study questions, please complete a service request form on our website.

If you have a question, please contact: AdvanceRI@brown.edu.

BioCON is hosting Dr. La’Nissa Brown-Baker, an Associate Director for Science Staffing at the FDA. Dr. Brown-Baker will come in-person and provide an overview of the FDA and HHS and discuss MS and PhD-level FDA career opportunities in the regulatory review process.

Register HERE

Join us to meet our exceptional Brown international PhD alumni who are currently excelling in various industries!

At this in-person event, you will:

•  Explore different career options that are available for international PhD students
• Hear alumni’s stories of career transition from academia to industries and the challenges that international students may face during the process
• Learn more about the skills you can gain at Brown for different types of careers

Our Ph.D. alumni speakers are:

• Jiuyang (Joey) Bai, PhD in Cognitive Science, Senior Machine Learning Engineer at CVS Health
• Isabella Gama, PhD in Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, Associate at McKinsey & Company
• Youngmin Lee, PhD in Chemistry, Patent Agent at Cantor Colburn LLP
• Asli Sahin, PhD in Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry, Director of Search and Evaluation Neuroscience at Abbvie
• Shubham Sharma, PhD in Chemical Engineering, Senior Scientist at Pfizer

All Brown University graduate, medical, and post-doctoral students are invited to join the celebration at the Graduate Student Lounge on May 3rd, where they will welcome the summer and say farewell to the semester!

Event Date /Time: May 3rd, 2024 (8:00 pm - 12:00 am)
Event Address: Graduate Student Lounge, 90 Thayer St, Providence

RSVP is required for all participants and guests, and drink tickets will be provided upon entry. Please note that this event is exclusively for Brown University graduate, medical, and post-doctoral students. Valid legal ID (21+) and Brown Student ID are required for entry, and Brown students are permitted to bring one registered guest (non-Brown student). Don’t miss out on this opportunity to unwind and enjoy the company of fellow peers and student leaders.

CAAS Rounds presents: Dr. Tara White - Dignity Neuroscience: Application to Addiction

Robert H. Brown, Jr., DPhil, MD
Donna M and Robert J Manning Chair in Neurosciences
Professor of Neurology
UMass Chan Medical School

Host:  Dr. Gregorio Valdez

Organized by the Brown University Center for Translational Neuroscience

“Empowering Career Growth and Professional Resilience Through Strategic Networking” is a workshop facilitated by Mari Anne Snow, CEO/Founder, Sophaya and the Remote Nation Institute (RNI) and Dr. Katherine M. Sharkey, Associate Professor, Departments of Medicine and Psychiatry & Human Behavior and Associate Dean for Gender Equity, The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. In this interactive, open discussion forum, participants will examine the nature of career paths in today’s workplace and examine new techniques for building professional networks to foster resilience and lifelong professional meaning and relevance. After completing this session, participants will leave with:

• A pragmatic understanding of the workplace today.
• Novel approaches for cultivating and maintaining a vibrant and supportive network.
• Techniques for building a meaningful career life.
• Concrete action steps to create forward momentum.

This event will take place in person on Thursday, May 2, 2024, from 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM at the Innovation Zone inside the Carney Institute for Brain Science (164 Angell Street, 4th Floor, Providence, RI 02906).

Light refreshments will be provided, and the event will last about 90 minutes.

The Carney Institute’s Advancing Research Careers (ARC) program aims to advance the research careers of women and persons historically excluded due to ethnicity and race (PEERs) in brain sciences at the level of advanced postdoctoral scholars and junior faculty. ARC is funded by an R25 award from NINDS to support an annual cohort of highly qualified participants through structured mentorship, research support, and activities that contribute to successful neuroscience research careers

Target Audience: This event is designed for early career scholars, including Carney ARC scholars, senior postdoctoral scholars at Brown, and junior faculty members at Brown who have recently transitioned from postdoctoral appointments.

Registration is required.

Questions? Please email postdoc-affairs@brown.edu

Mari Anne Snow, CEO, Sophaya and the Remote Nation Institute: With over 20+ years’ experience leading remote teams, Mari Anne is a recognized remote work thought leader. Her company, Sophaya, helps organizations optimize remote work programs and her Remote Nation Institute is re-writing leadership best practices and standardizing remote work business training to educate today’s remote/distributed professionals. Her book, The Remote Work Handbook, provides practical, real-world advice for achieving success with remote/distributed teams.

Katie Sharkey, MD, PhD: As director of the Office of Women in Medicine and Science in the Division of Biology and Medicine, Katie develops programming aimed at fostering academic achievement and professional development of women faculty, house officers, students, and trainees. She chaired the Mentoring Committee of the American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA) from 2019-2023 and now represents AMWA on the steering committee of the Women’s Wellness through Equity and Leadership (WEL) leadership training program. Katie is also a past chair of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) Young Investigator Research Forum, which aims to position early-career investigators for a successful research career.

MCB Graduate Program Seminar

Christopher W. Cowan, PhD

Professor and Chair, Department of Neuroscience

SmartState Endowed Chair in Brain Imaging

Medical University of South Carolina

“Transcriptional regulation of cortical development in a syndromic form of autism”

Hosted by: Sofia Lizarraga

Bioimaging careers and microscopy as a common thread 

Dr. Lylah Deady, Ph.D.

Biosystems Sales Specialist / Account Manage at Nikon Instruments

BioCON is excited to welcome Dr. Lylah Deady who will be joining us in person at Brown University! Dr. Lylah Deady is a Biosystems Sales Specialist and Account Manager at Nikon Instruments. She will come and discuss her experiences of working for a global microscope company and broadly speak about opportunities for bioimaging careers post-Ph.D.

This event will be catered by Poke Works!

During this workshop, we will focus on how to prepare for your next interview.

This includes:

• General rules of an interview and how to prepare for it
• Common interview questions and the frameworks to structure your thoughts and answers
• Tips on how to answer the tough questions (with examples) 
• Resources for preparation and practice

This program is open to all Brown PhD students and Postdocs.

Saransh Sharma, MIT, will present a talk, “Miniaturized biomedical devices for navigation, sensing and stimulation.”

Abstract: Medical electronic devices are an integral part of the healthcare system today and are used in a variety of applications around us. The design of such devices has several stringent requirements, the key being miniaturization, low power operation, and wireless functionality. In this talk, I will present CMOS-based miniaturized, low-power and wireless biomedical devices in three broad domains: (a) in-vivo navigation and tracking, (b) in-vivo sensing of biomarkers and physiological signals, and (c) in-vivo stimulation and drug delivery. For the first part, I will talk about ingestible and implantable devices that can be used to achieve sub-mm tracking accuracy in 3D and in real time inside the human body, which is very useful for localizing devices in the GI tract, during precision surgeries and minimally invasive procedures. In the second part, I will present the design of a novel on-chip 3D magnetic sensor that is highly miniaturized and low-power, thus making it suitable for many biomedical applications. In the last part, I will briefly talk about my recent work on a wearable device for multi-modal sensing from sweat, followed by ongoing work on devices for stimulation and drug-delivery. I will end the talk with a glimpse of my future research direction. 

Bio: Saransh Sharma received the B.Tech. degree in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering from IIT Kharagpur, India, in 2017 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Caltech, Pasadena, CA, USA, in 2018 and 2023 respectively. He is currently a post-doctoral scholar at MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA. His research is on integrated circuits and systems design, with special emphasis on low-power biomedical applications. He was a recipient of the Demetriades-Tsafka-Kokkalis award for best PhD thesis at Caltech in biotechnology and related fields, the Jakob van Zyl Predoctoral Research award at Caltech, Lewis Winner Award for Outstanding Paper at ISSCC 2024, Charles Lee Powell Fellowship at Caltech, and Excellence in Mentorship award at Caltech for mentoring undergraduate and graduate research students.

Title:  Dynamical modeling, decoding, and control of brain network activity 

Host:  Nicholas Tolley, Neurscience Graduate Student

MCB Graduate Program Seminar

Thomas A. Reh, PhD

Professor of Biological Structure

Institute for Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine

University of Washington

“Stimulating neurogenesis in glial cells; never too late to change their fate.”

Hosted by: Robert Louis Hastings

DSCoV (Data Science, Computation, and Visualization) workshops are lunchtime introductions to basic data science and programming skills and tools, offered by and for Brown staff, faculty, and students (with occasional presenters from outside Brown). The workshops are interactive, so bring a laptop. All are welcome, and pizza is usually served.

JavaScript for JsPsych

Presenter: Robert Gemma, Research Software Engineer (Graphics), OIT

Learn JavaScript fundamentals with an emphasis on working with JsPsych. Familiarity with jsPsych and Honeycomb is useful but not necessary. 

The workshops can also be attended on Zoom.

Peiyan Dong, Northeastern University, will present a talk, “Towards Ultimate Efficiency in Ubiquitous ML Powered Intelligence and Green AI.”

Abstract: As AI techniques continue to advance, the efficient deployment of deep neural networks on resource-constrained devices becomes increasingly appealing yet challenging. Simultaneously, the proliferation of powerful AI technologies has raised significant concerns about sustainability and fairness, demanding increased attention from the community. This talk presents two novel software-hardware co-designs for improving the efficiency and sustainability of deep learning models. The first part introduces a hardware-efficient adaptive token pruning framework for Vision Transformers (ViTs) on embedded FPGA, HeatViT, which achieves significant speedup under similar model accuracy compared to the state-of-the-art. HeatViT is the first end-to-end accelerator for ViT on embedded FPGA and also achieve practical speedup by data-level compression for the first time. The second presents PackQViT and Agile Quant, a paradigm of the efficient implementation for transformer-based models by sub-8-bit packed quantization and SIMD-based optimization for computing kernels. Our framework can achieve better task performance than state-of-the-art ViTs and LLMs with significant acceleration and power saving on edge processors, such as mobile CPU, Raspberry Pi and RISC V. This work not only marks the first successful implementation of the LLM on the edge but also addresses the previous limitation where edge processors struggled to efficiently handle sub-8-bit computations. At the conclusion of the presentation, the speaker will discuss today’s challenges related to AI sustainability and fairness and outline her research plans aimed at addressing these issues.

Bio: Peiyan (Peggie) Dong is a final-year Ph.D. Student at Northeastern University, Boston, advised by Prof. Yanzhi Wang. Her research area is the intersection of Software-Hardware Co-design, Hardware Architecture, and Efficient Emerging Devices, such as superconducting devices and quantum circuits. Her work has been published broadly in top conference and journal venues (e.g., DAC, ICCAD, MICRO, HPCA, ICS, ISSCC, AAAI, ICML, NeurIPS, CVPR, IJCAI, ECCV, RTAS, TCAS-I, TCAD, etc.) She has received Rising Star Award in EECS 2023, three Oral Paper Awards, one Spotlight Paper Award, and also the inventor of one U.S. patent.

Title:  Olfactory information coding and routing in cortical neural circuits

Advisor:  Dr. Alexander Fleischmann

Title:  Circuits linking reward, cognition, and decision-making: From primate anatomy to human neuroimaging, disease, andneuromodulation

Host:  Dr. Darcy Diesburg

The Advance RI-CTR Clinical and Translational Research Seminar Series showcases clinical and translational research from across Rhode Island. This series features outstanding science from expert investigators alternating with Advance RI-CTR Pilot Projects awardees sharing their early research. Seminars are held virtually on the second Thursday of each month.

Thursday, April 11, 2024 (12:00pm-12:30pm)

Christine Clarkin, PT, DPT, PhD: “EMPOWER PD: An integrated, person-centered model of health care delivery from community inspiration to clinic implementation”

Brain health and healthy aging are important for everyone across the lifespan, but even more critical if one has been diagnosed with a chronic, progressive neurodegenerative disease such as Parkinson’s disease (PD). Data from a pilot study assessing community need, recommendations, and implementation of a new model of care for people living with PD will be presented. First, qualitative data collected during a series of focus groups with people living with Parkinson’s disease (PwPD) and their care partners (CPs) and individual health provider interviews will be discussed. Second, those recommendations characterizing an efficient and effective model of support that meet the healthcare needs of PwPD were implemented as the EMPOWER PD Clinic pilot study. Data presented will reveal a novel approach to improve the lives of PwPD and their caregivers and supports the clinic as a model that would empower PwPD to more fully participate in decision making and management of their health.