Seminars

Gašper Tkačik explores whether the language of information in biology can become a predictive scientific theory. The lecture connects information transfer from DNA to proteins, positional signals that guide cell fate during development, neural information processing, and the storage and inheritance of information in evolving genomes. It brings physics, information theory and quantitative biology together to examine these processes across biological scales. Tkačik is Professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria. Shinya Kuroda provides commentary; Arisa Ema moderates. Online via Zoom Webinar. Wednesday 14 October 2026, 14:00–15:00 JST (Asia/Tokyo; UTC+9). Public advance registration is required through the organizer’s event page. The lecture is in English with Japanese interpretation. Organized by Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo Institutes for Advanced Study.

Ilaria Ferlenghi discusses a career spanning structural biology, cryo-electron microscopy, vaccine research and development, and the growing role of artificial intelligence and machine learning in scientific innovation and entrepreneurship.

Real-time measurement of local biomolecule concentrations in living tissue requires sensors that are stable, selective and minimally invasive. This seminar examines single-walled carbon nanotubes, whose durable near-infrared fluorescence and sensitivity to their surroundings support optical biosensing. Biopolymer functionalization gives the nanotubes biological compatibility and selectivity for particular molecular targets. Spectroscopy, microscopy and machine-learning-assisted analysis are used to characterize sensor interactions and extract biological information, with applications spanning live-cell imaging, wearable sensing and continuous monitoring.

Clarice D. Aiello examines evidence that quantum effects influence biological function, including magnetic sensing used in animal navigation, cellular metabolism and enzyme activity, and the capture of light energy in photosynthesis. The talk reviews proposed biophysical mechanisms and their implications for human, plant and environmental biology, while considering the difficulty of connecting observations from nanometre scales to whole organisms. A central question is whether quantum mechanics can be established or ruled out as the explanation for physiologically relevant effects, and whether those effects can be controlled for useful applications. Potential directions include biomimetic electromagnetic probes, quantum-computing architectures that operate at room temperature, improved solar-energy devices and new therapies. Progress will require work across disciplines and scales, with theory and experiment developed together.

Tom Nowakowski explains lineage barcoding and single-cell sequencing approaches for reconstructing neural stem-cell family trees and early wiring programs in developing mouse and human brains.

Lindsay N. Oberman reviews evidence for transcranial magnetic stimulation protocols in autism spectrum disorder. The seminar first explains how TMS works and how it can probe the brain mechanisms associated with autism. It then presents NIH research using repetitive TMS as an experimental therapeutic tool, examining its effects on both brain function and behaviour to guide the development of potential interventions. Online via Duke Zoom. Wednesday 7 October 2026, 16:00 EDT (America/New_York; UTC−4). Register through the event-specific Register Here link on the Duke Autism Seminar Series page to receive remote access. The presentation will not be recorded. Accommodation requests should reach the organizer at least ten days before the event. The speaker directs NIMH’s Developmental Clinical Neurophysiology and Neurostimulation Research Program.

Paul S. Weiss (UCLA) explores low-energy interactions and balanced cycling in natural systems as models for efficient synthetic devices and recycling. Because the relevant energies fall below visible-photon energies, tunnelling spectroscopy and imaging are used to probe these processes. Replicating biochemical cycling and low-energy transport could reduce the energy needed for devices and materials recovery. The work seeks missing physical principles, including spin conservation in chiral molecules and polarizability in biological and synthetic systems. This perspective has led to thermal-control advances in scale, speed and magnitude. Atomic-resolution imaging, spectroscopy and functional measurements help build precise structures while revealing heterogeneous nanoscale behaviour. The talk relates these advances to the physical, electronic, mechanical, thermal and chemical connections between materials and their surroundings that determine future nanomaterial measurements and devices.

How do humans stabilize an inverted pendulum, and why does a balanced pole eventually fall? Drawing on 25 years of fingertip pole-balancing research, this talk examines neural correction delays: longer poles move more slowly relative to the nervous system’s response time. Delay-differential models can stabilize the upright position, yet skilled people still experience falls. The proposed explanation is microchaos arising from interactions among delay, sensory dead zones and frequency-dependent force encoding. A region of transient falling solutions lies next to stable microchaotic dynamics. Such microchaos is absent in virtual frontal-plane balancing tasks, while models of standing postural sway lack the corresponding transient regime. The comparison suggests that human falls, unlike pole falls, are more plausibly associated with medical events or slips and trips.

To orchestrate complex behaviors in mammals, the cerebral cortex must continuously transmit its processing results to subcortical regions. While internal cortical processing relies on highly selective sparse codes, these descending cortical output streams employ an enigmatic dense code, characterized by high firing rates and low feature selectivity. This dense population code presents a profound paradox: how can downstream regions extract precise, cognitively relevant signals when most cortical output neurons can be active at any moment? We address this paradox by testing the hypothesis that cortex does not lose information when switching to a dense code. Instead, it utilizes a mechanism for sparse-to-dense coding transformations discovered by my laboratory: thalamocortical synapses target specifically the dendritic initiation zone for calcium action potentials (APs), which enables cortical output neurons to transmit multiple information streams simultaneously via a multiplexed 1-2-3 AP syntax. I will provide first evidence that this remarkable synaptic specificity and coding syntax generalize across long-range pathways. Information coupling via an anatomically and biophysically distinct dendritic nexus may hence be a ubiquitous mechanism for sparse-to-dense coding transformations in cortex. Dissecting these mechanistic origins of cortical output streams is only now possible due to a unique in vivo – in silico approach, perfected over two decades, that my laboratory developed for bridging the gaps between dendritic and population-level computations

Richard Huang investigates how DNA nanostructures deform under uneven hydrodynamic forces, a question relevant to drug delivery, vaccines and biosensors. Coarse-grained molecular dynamics and mechanical models first examine linear and circular DNA in extensional flow. Drag concentrates tension near the middle of linear duplexes, disrupting base pairs and causing overstretching. Deforming minicircles straighten along their sides while concentrating bending into opposing tips and localized kinks. Models based on DNA elasticity and hydrodynamic-force distributions explain these responses, then extend to wireframe DNA origami to study force transmission and how local structural transitions produce whole-particle deformation. The results inform structures designed for stability or controlled deformation in flow. Online via Zoom. Friday 2 October 2026, 12:00–13:00 EDT (America/New_York; UTC−4). Open the Zoom link on the official event page; the audience explicitly includes the public. Richard Huang is affiliated with MIT. Organized by MIT Department of Mathematics — Computational Research in Boston and Beyond Seminar.

Cryopreservation constrains manufacturing and clinical delivery of immune cells such as NK and T cells. DMSO protects against freezing but becomes toxic at physiological temperatures; associated infusion morbidity can require washing or divided dosing that diminishes therapeutic effectiveness. This talk presents an alternative in which reversible, cytocompatible hydrogels encapsulate cells before freezing without DMSO. The speaker examines evidence that encapsulation cushions osmotic stress, suppresses kinetic and phase transitions, and reduces injury caused by extracellular ice growth and fusion. The discussion covers recovery efficiency, function after thawing, control of biological stress responses, and the challenges of extending the approach to clinical-scale cell preservation.

Vanessa Siffredi explores why the corpus callosum is central to typical brain development, yet some children born without it or with callosal abnormalities develop comparably to their peers. The talk connects callosal structure and communication between hemispheres with cognition, attention, executive function, memory, language and socio-emotional development. Structural and functional neuroimaging studies of typical development and callosal dysgenesis examine how developing brains compensate for alterations in this major white-matter pathway. Siffredi is affiliated with CHUV and UNIL; Carole Guedj chairs the seminar. Hybrid: Auditoire de pédiatrie Fred Bamatter, HUG, Hôpital des Enfants, Geneva; online via Zoom. Tuesday 29 September 2026, 09:30–10:30 CEST (Europe/Zurich; UTC+2), followed by CIBM news and networking until 11:00. Organized by CIBM Center for Biomedical Imaging — Breakfast and Science. In-person attendance is free without registration. Remote attendees must register through the Zoom link on the event page and select the 29 September occurrence.

Mark Harnett presents work on how synaptic organization, nonlinear dendritic processing, and neuronal activity patterns interact to support computation, flexibility, and learning in the adult mammalian neocortex. The Brain and Cognitive Sciences colloquium is followed by a reception.

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.

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.

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.

Klemens Rottner (Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, Braunschweig) presents evidence that profilin acts as a master regulator of actin filament dynamics essential for cell migration and growth, controlling both formin- and Arp2/3 complex-dependent actin assembly pathways.

The Nature versus Nurture debate has generally been considered from the lens of genome versus experience dichotomy and has dominated our thinking about behavioral individuality and personality traits. In contrast, the role of nonheritable noise during brain development in behavioral variation is understudied. Using the Drosophila melanogaster visual system, I will discuss our efforts to dissect how individuality in circuit wiring emerges during development, and how that helps generate individual behavioral variation.