Seminars
September 2026
Tracking the Spark: PET Imaging of Early Mitochondrial Distress in Neurodegenerative Disease
Meagan McManus· University of Arizona, Center for Innovation in Brain Science and Department of Pharmacology
Tue, Sep 22 · 23:00 UTC · Online
Meagan McManus examines mitochondrial dysfunction as an early driver of brain ageing and neurodegeneration. Reactive oxygen species and other mitochondrial stress signals connect impaired energy metabolism with glial activation. The talk presents preclinical evidence for [18F]ROStrace PET, a redox-sensitive tracer that crosses the blood–brain barrier, as a non-invasive way to detect mitochondrial and immune distress before overt pathology in models relevant to late-onset Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Online via the University of Arizona Zoom meeting. Use the Zoom link published on the organizer’s event page. Tuesday 22 September 2026, 16:00–17:00 MST (America/Phoenix; UTC−7). Organized by the Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience and the Department of Neuroscience. This listing advertises the verified remote attendance option.
AI for the Sciences: towards understanding
Klaus Robert Müller· TU Berlin & Korea University, Seoul
Tue, Sep 22 · 16:00 UTC · Vienna, Austria
ISTA Lecture by Klaus Robert Müller (TU Berlin & Korea University, Seoul) on how machine learning and AI enable scientific research, particularly in medicine and chemistry, and on explainability techniques for extracting understanding from machine learning models.
Lessons from the Dead
Z Yan Wang· Columbia University Zuckerman Institute
Tue, Sep 22 · 14:30 UTC · New York, United States
Z Yan Wang presents comparative neuroscience research on the brains and behaviors of octopuses and bumblebees to illuminate life-history processes. The talk is part of Columbia's Tuesdays@10 neuroscience seminar program for researchers across fields and career stages.
Early Sleep Biomarkers of Alzheimer's Disease Pathophysiology and Memory Impairment
Bryce Mander· UC Irvine School of Medicine
Fri, Sep 18 · 19:00 UTC · Stanford, United States
Bryce Mander presents research on early sleep biomarkers associated with Alzheimer's disease pathophysiology and memory impairment. The William C. Dement Seminar connects sleep and circadian neuroscience with neurodegeneration, cognition and clinically relevant approaches to detecting disease-related change.
The Connectome in Use: From anatomical wiring to functional organization in the behaving C. elegans brain
Rani Borbara· Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, MIT
Fri, Sep 18 · 16:00 UTC · Cambridge, United States
Rani Borbara presents brain-wide recordings from more than 150 freely moving C. elegans to examine how anatomical connectivity becomes functional organization during behavior. Cross-animal models map cell-class conditional dependencies and test how synapses, gap junctions, neuromodulation and shared brain states shape circuit dynamics.
Deciphering the Dynamics of the Unconscious Brain under General Anesthesia
Emery Brown· Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Thu, Sep 17 · 19:00 UTC · Stanford, Gunn Rotunda
Stanford Neurosciences Seminar Series talk by Emery Brown (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Neuroscience Statistics Research Lab) on deciphering the dynamics of the unconscious brain under general anesthesia, hosted by the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute.
Finding Meaning in Memories
Daphna Shohamy, Ashok Litwin-Kumar· Columbia University
Wed, Sep 16 · 22:30 UTC · Jerome L. Greene Science Center, United States
Daphna Shohamy and Ashok Litwin-Kumar bridge experimental and computational neuroscience to explain how the brain assigns significance to memories, how dopamine shapes memory-guided decisions, and how bodily signals influence learning. Isabel Low moderates a public discussion and question session.
Chemistry in the Age of Abundance
Omar M. Yaghi· Tsinghua University — Distinguished Chair Professor
Recorded
Omar M. Yaghi examines how reticular chemistry changes the scale and diversity of materials that chemists can design. By joining molecular building blocks into extended structures, researchers have developed large families of metal–organic frameworks and covalent organic frameworks with tunable internal spaces and functions. The lecture asks how artificial intelligence and robotics could accelerate the preparation and exploration of these materials, moving chemical discovery from scarcity toward abundance. Yaghi connects this approach to carbon capture and the collection of water from air, building on design principles for nanoporous frameworks and their applications in gas storage and separation. The discussion extends the metal–organic framework research recognised by the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry into current methods for discovery and environmental applications.
Video · 1 h 17 min · CaptionsChemistryInorganic ChemistrySeries: Collegium Helveticum and International Balzan Foundation
SQI Seminar Series: Tal Linzen, NYU
Tal Linzen· New York University; Google
Tue, Sep 15 · 20:00 UTC · Cambridge, United States
Tal Linzen, an associate professor of linguistics and data science at New York University and a research scientist at Google, will speak in MIT's Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence seminar series. His work combines behavioral experiments and computational methods to study language learning and comprehension, alongside large-language-model post-training, evaluation, and interpretability.
Changing Perspectives on Self Control
Yuko Munakata· University of California, Davis
Wed, Sep 9 · 20:00 UTC · Cambridge, United States
Yuko Munakata presents evidence challenging capacity-only accounts of self-control and explains how experience, effort, and expected payoff shape executive-function engagement and later outcomes.
Ensuring the Vitality of the Biomedical Research Workforce
Elena Fuentes-Afflick· Association of American Medical Colleges
Wed, Sep 9 · 18:00 UTC · Lipsett Amphitheater, NIH Bethesda campus
Elena Fuentes-Afflick examines the state of the biomedical research workforce and the conditions needed to sustain a healthy, productive research enterprise. This NIH Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series event is offered in person and through NIH VideoCast.
Wilsonian Renormalization of Neural Network Field Theories
Zohar Ringel· Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Tue, Sep 8 · 19:30 UTC · Waterloo, Canada
Zohar Ringel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem presents a renormalisation-group approach to deep learning based on neural-network field theories. The seminar examines scaling laws, the removal of non-learnable field modes, benign overfitting and open questions about feature learning. The confirmed Quantum Matter seminar takes place in the Bob Room at Perimeter Institute on 8 September 2026, from 15:30 to 17:00 Toronto time.
Learning and memory in the infant brain
Nick Turk-Browne· Yale University
Tue, Sep 8 · 14:30 UTC · New York, United States
Nick Turk-Browne presents research using infant functional MRI to investigate how the hippocampus supports learning and memory early in life. The seminar connects neural development, memory formation and infantile amnesia through new methods for studying awake infants.
Margaret S. Livingstone, Ph.D. - PNI Seminar Series
Margaret S. Livingstone· Harvard Medical School
Thu, Sep 3 · 16:15 UTC · Princeton, United States
Margaret Livingstone of Harvard Medical School presents in Princeton Neuroscience Institute's public seminar series. Livingstone's laboratory studies how visual recognition occurs in the primate brain using behavior, brain imaging, and electrophysiology.
AI agents for therapeutic reasoning across biological contexts
Michelle M. Li· Carnegie Mellon University
Recorded
Michelle M. Li examines how computational analyses can preserve the biological context of a proposed treatment, including cell type, disease state, genetic background and patient characteristics. She introduces Medea, an AI system that combines biological software, predictive models and literature retrieval while checking intermediate steps and reconciling evidence. The seminar presents evaluations involving cell-specific target selection, cancer-cell synthetic lethality and immunotherapy response. A separate yeast experiment tests predictions against previously unpublished measurements of gene-pair interactions under DNA-damaging treatments. The research addresses whether an agent can transfer useful evidence between contexts while recognizing when that transfer is unsupported. Reported comparisons cover predictive performance, computational failures and the ability to abstain. This recording retains the original seminar date.
Video · 50 minComputational BiologySystems BiologySeries: Microsoft Research New England Generative Modeling & Sampling Seminar
August 2026
Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance Research Symposium
Jamie Zeitzer· Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance at Stanford
Wed, Aug 26 · 23:00 UTC · Stanford, United States
Stanford's summer research symposium features a keynote by Jamie Zeitzer, undergraduate lightning talks, and a poster and demonstration session on human performance research.
Advancing CAR T Cell Therapy for Brain Tumors: Overcoming Barriers to Efficacy
Christine Brown· Beckman Research Institute of City of Hope
Tue, Aug 25 · 17:00 UTC · Mahley Auditorium & Online (Zoom)
Gladstone-UCSF Institute of Genomic Immunology Seminar by Christine Brown, PhD (Deputy Director, T Cell Therapeutics Research Laboratories) on developing and refining redirected CAR T cells for malignant brain tumors, including glioblastoma, tumor heterogeneity, immunosuppressive microenvironments, delivery routes, and manufacturing.
Special Seminar with Hee-Sup Shin, MD, PhD, Institute for Basic Science (IBS)
Hee-Sup Shin· Institute for Basic Science (IBS), South Korea
Fri, Aug 14 · 18:00 UTC · Cambridge, United States
Special seminar at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory with neuroscientist Hee-Sup Shin, MD, PhD, of the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), held in the Picower Seminar Room (46-3310) at 43 Vassar Street.
Emerging NeuroTech: Ultrasound in Neuroscience
Yaoheng “Mack” Yang, Dian Li· University of Southern California (USC)
Fri, Aug 14 · 16:00 UTC · Cambridge, United States
MIT researchers and students are invited to two talks on emerging applications of ultrasound for non-invasive brain imaging, neural modulation and wearable human-machine interaction.
Emerging NeuroTech: Ultrasound in Neuroscience
TBA· Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Fri, Aug 14 · 16:00 UTC · Cambridge, United States
Two talks present emerging applications of ultrasound technology in neuroscience, spanning brain imaging and human-machine interaction. The in-person seminar is open to MIT researchers, students, and staff and is supported by the MIT School of Science and the Feng Lab at the McGovern Institute.