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NIH Research Project Grant (Parent R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
PA-25-301, posted December 18, 2024 and currently open. NIH's parent announcement for investigator-initiated R01 research project grants not proposing clinical trials; standard NIH submission policies and due dates apply, with the listing closing January 7, 2028.
OHBM 2027 Annual Meeting
Annual meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, bringing together researchers to share groundbreaking research, engage in educational forums, and foster collaboration across neuroimaging methods and applications.
ISSCR 2027 Annual Meeting
Annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research at the Moscone West Convention Center, San Francisco, recognizing 25 years of discovery, collaboration, and progress in stem cell science.
2027 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)
The flagship conference of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society, held May 24-28, 2027 at Coex in Seoul, South Korea, bringing together the world's top researchers and industry leaders to advance the field of robotics.
APS Global Physics Summit 2027
The American Physical Society's Global Physics Summit, the world's largest annual physics research conference, joining the March Meeting and April Meeting; the 2027 edition is announced for April 11-16, 2027 in Atlanta, Georgia.
AACR Annual Meeting 2027
The American Association for Cancer Research's flagship annual meeting, themed 'Delivering Discovery Science: The Bridge to Breakthrough Therapeutics', at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida.
ACS Spring 2027
One of the American Chemical Society's twice-yearly ACS Meetings & Expositions, held March 21-25, 2027 in New Orleans, LA, featuring presentations across the chemistry divisions and an exposition.
Cosyne 2027
The annual Computational and Systems Neuroscience (Cosyne) meeting, an exchange forum for experimental and theoretical/computational approaches to problems in systems neuroscience. Cosyne returns to Montreal, Canada, from 11-16 March 2027.
2027 AAAS Annual Meeting
The multidisciplinary AAAS Annual Meeting convenes scientists, engineers, policymakers, educators, and journalists to examine how research, policy, media, and public trust shape scientific progress and evidence-informed action.
AAAI-27
The 41st Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence at the Palais des Congres de Montreal, featuring technical papers, special tracks, invited speakers, workshops, tutorials, poster sessions, and competitions to promote AI research and scientific exchange.
EMBO Postdoctoral Fellowships
Supports internationally mobile postdoctoral researchers in the life sciences for up to two years, including a salary or stipend, a relocation allowance and support for fellows with children. Applications accepted throughout the year; next hard cutoff 22 January 2027, 14:00 CET.
SICB 2027
Annual meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, PA, spanning research across integrative and comparative biology.
Cell Bio 2026 - An ASCB|EMBO Meeting
Joint ASCB|EMBO meeting at the San Diego Convention Center bringing together the cell biology community to share scientific discoveries, network with colleagues across career stages, and explore new research areas and methodologies.
NeurIPS 2026
The Fortieth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems brings together interdisciplinary machine-learning research through peer-reviewed sessions, invited talks, demonstrations, tutorials, workshops, and an exposition.
Wellcome Career Development Awards — November 2026 round
Funding for mid-career researchers from any discipline who have the potential to become international research leaders and whose work relates to human life, health and wellbeing.
National Science Foundation Translation to Practice (NSF TTP)
NSF support for translating research discoveries and innovations toward practical use through the TTP Translational and Partnership tracks.
Neuroscience 2026
The Society for Neuroscience annual meeting brings the neuroscience community together for a multi-day scientific program, professional development, networking, and presentation of research spanning the field. Registration and housing are open for the Washington, DC meeting.
Wellcome Early-Career Awards — November 2026 round
Funding for early-career researchers from any discipline who are ready to develop their research identity through an innovative project related to human life, health and wellbeing.
Knight Initiative - Rosenkranz Aging Symposium
An in-person Stanford symposium highlighting recent progress in brain resilience and aging research, followed by a neuroscience poster session featuring work from the Stanford community.
NSF SBIR/STTR Pilot Emphasis on Scientific Instrumentation
NSF funding for startups and small businesses developing next-generation scientific instruments, experimental platforms and enabling technologies for research.
McKnight Scholar Awards
Supports exceptional young neuroscientists in the early stages of establishing an independent laboratory and research career. Up to ten scholars receive a total award of $225,000 paid in equal installments of $75,000 in 2027, 2028, and 2029; applications open early August 2026.
The 2026 Picower Lecture with Richard L. Huganir
Richard L. Huganir discusses research on the molecular mechanisms that regulate glutamate receptors, the brain's major excitatory neurotransmitter receptors, and thereby modulate communication between neurons.
A Riemannian Geometry Perspective on Foundation Models
Oden Institute Seminar by Rex Ying (Yale University) on how non-Euclidean geometries, particularly hyperbolic geometry, can enhance foundation models by better capturing hierarchies and symmetries in real-world data, with applications across Transformers, language model training, multimodal systems, and recommender systems.
ASHG 2026 Annual Meeting
Annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics at the Palais des Congres de Montreal, gathering 7,500+ attendees from 75 countries for 100+ scientific sessions and 240 exhibitors and sponsors across human genetics and genomics research.
UKRI Translation: BBSRC Proof of Concept 2026
Funding to translate bioscience research into innovations such as products, services and solutions with real-world economic, societal and environmental impact. Opened 5 August 2026; £3,000,000 total, £100,000–£800,000 per project at 80% full economic cost.
ERC Starting Grant
ERC-2027-STG call, opened 22 July 2026. Supports early-career researchers of any nationality to build their own teams and pursue frontier research in any field, with grants of up to EUR 1.5 million for 5 years (additional funding possible for relocation or major costs).
EMBL Entrepreneurial Minds - Beyond the Structure: My Journey Through Science, Innovation and Life Choices
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.
Engineering Research Initiation (ERI)
NSF support for new engineering investigators at eligible non-R1 institutions to initiate research programs, build capacity and advance their careers.
Building a Brain, One Cell at a Time: Reading the Developmental Instructions Behind Human Neural Diversity
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.
Molecular mechanisms in evolution and ecology
This EMBO workshop brings experimental and computational researchers together around molecular mechanisms of adaptation, evolutionary dynamics, microbial communities, symbiosis, biodiversity, and cell-environment interactions.
BRAIN Initiative: Theories, Models and Methods for Analysis of Complex Data from the Brain (R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
This NIH BRAIN Initiative opportunity supports the development of theories, computational models, and analytical methods for large-scale, complex brain data. Priority is given to novel capabilities for integrating and interpreting physiological, anatomical, connectivity, behavioral, and cell-type-specific data emerging from BRAIN Initiative research.
BRAIN Initiative: Research Resource Grants for Technology Integration and Dissemination (U24 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)
This NIH BRAIN Initiative opportunity supports dissemination of existing resources into neuroscience research practice. Activities may include distribution of tools and reagents, training in new technologies, access to technology platforms or specialized facilities, minor improvements to resource delivery, and adaptations for user communities.
Targeted Grants to Institutes
Supports established institutes and research centers in mathematics and the physical sciences to strengthen contacts within the international scientific community; up to $750,000 (inclusive of 20% indirect costs) over a three-year award period, with up to ten grants each year.
Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology (PRFB)
NSF postdoctoral fellowships supporting early-career scientists who combine artificial intelligence with biological research and training to advance biotechnology innovation.
6th Annual Precision Mental Health Symposium: From Circuits to Mindsets: Precision Mental Health in the Real World
Stanford's annual Precision Mental Health Symposium explores how neuroscience, psychiatry, data science, and artificial intelligence can translate brain research into real-world mental-health care. Themes include circuits and cognition, biomarkers and neuroimaging, rapid-acting interventions, neuromodulation, and precision therapeutics.
AI for the Sciences: towards understanding
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.
Wellcome Discovery Awards
Funding for established researchers and teams from any discipline to pursue bold, creative research that can deliver significant shifts in understanding related to human life, health and wellbeing.
HFSP Accelerator Grant 2027
The HFSP Accelerator Grant helps eligible HFSP Research Grant teams add an independent group leader from an underrepresented eligible country, bringing complementary expertise and strengthening international life-science collaboration.
Deciphering the Dynamics of the Unconscious Brain under General Anesthesia
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.
ERC Proof of Concept Grant
ERC-2026-PoC call funding ERC grantees to explore the innovation potential of their frontier research; a lump sum of EUR 150,000 for a period of 18 months, with one application per Principal Investigator per call.
Reconstructing the human past: using ancient and modern genomics
This EMBO-EMBL symposium joins population genetics, bioinformatics, microbiology, anthropology, archaeology, and history to study human variation, ancient pathogens, domestication, analytical methods, and ethics in paleogenomics.
NIH Director’s Early Independence Award (DP5 Clinical Trial Optional)
The NIH Common Fund enables exceptional junior scientists to bypass a traditional postdoctoral period and launch an independent research career at a supportive institution.
MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships 2026
HORIZON-MSCA-2026-PF-01 call, open since 9 April 2026 with a budget of EUR 399.05 million expected to fund nearly 1,600 projects. European and Global Postdoctoral Fellowships help researchers acquire new skills through international, interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral mobility.
NIH Director's Pioneer Award (DP1 Clinical Trial Optional)
RFA-RM-27-001, posted June 29, 2026 and currently open. The Pioneer Award supports individual scientists proposing pioneering, high-impact approaches to major challenges in biomedical or behavioral research; 8 awards expected from $8,000,000 in program funding.
Preparing for non-academic interviews
Industry recruiters and hiring managers share practical advice on preparing for non-academic interviews, followed by a live question-and-answer session for researchers exploring careers beyond academia.
Chemical biology 2026
This EMBO workshop covers emerging chemical-biology research spanning computational protein design, big data and AI, technologies for probing and manipulating biology, chemical synthetic biology, and RNA.
ECCV 2026
The 19th European Conference on Computer Vision, the biennial premier research conference in computer vision and machine learning managed by the European Computer Vision Association, held at Malmo Arena and Malmomassan in Malmo, Sweden.
NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award (R01 Clinical Trial Optional)
The NIH Common Fund supports individuals or teams pursuing exceptionally innovative, unconventional research with the potential to create or overturn major paradigms across biomedical and behavioral science.
Project Grants in the Natural and Technical Sciences 2026
Supports fundamental research within the natural and technical sciences with potential future applications in life science, health science or sustainability; up to DKK 4 million per project from a DKK 77 million grant capital in 2026. Call opened 19 June 2026.
ERC Plus Grant 2026
The ERC Plus Grant supports a single principal investigator pursuing an ambitious, transformative frontier-research project beyond the scope of existing ERC grants, with four to seven years of lump-sum funding.
Project Grants in Bioscience and Basic Biomedicine
Novo Nordisk Foundation open-competition project grants of DKK 1–4.5 million over 1–3 years for fundamental research anchored at a Danish university, hospital or non-profit research institution; call opened 18 June 2026, with an additional DKK 12 million reserved for a strategic theme on microbiota-host interactions.
ERC Advanced Grant
ERC-2026-ADG call, opened 28 May 2026. For established researchers with a track-record of significant research achievements, in any scientific field, hosted in an EU Member State or associated country; up to EUR 2.5 million for 5 years, with additional funding possible.
Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance Research Symposium
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
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.
The exoplanet revolution and life in the Universe - Public Lecture & Panel Discussion
Public lecture by Prof. Didier Queloz, FRS (Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy, Cambridge; Professor of Physics, ETH Zurich), organized by the Swiss Physical Society at EPFL, on how exoplanet discoveries transformed understanding of planet formation and the search for life signatures in planetary atmospheres. Free admission for the general public.
NIH Director’s New Innovator Award Program (DP2 Clinical Trial Optional)
The NIH Common Fund supports exceptionally creative early-stage investigators pursuing bold, high-impact biomedical or behavioral research without requiring preliminary data.
Emerging NeuroTech: Ultrasound in Neuroscience
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
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.
Career Awards at the Scientific Interface
CASI provides $560,000 over five years to bridge advanced postdoctoral training and the first years of faculty service for researchers from mathematics, physics, chemistry, computer science, statistics or engineering applying their expertise to biological questions. Pre-proposals due August 14, 2026, 3 pm EDT.
Defining profilin function in mammalian actin dynamics and cell behaviour
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.
Briefing Chat: Orcas smashed a sunfish to bits — researchers aren’t sure why
Nature staff discuss a large survey of insect diversity in the Amazon and unusual orca behavior captured on video involving a sunfish.
‘Holy grail’ of naked mole-rat research reveals how queens rule
Nature reporters discuss the chemical signal used by naked mole-rat queens to maintain reproductive hierarchy and how people reason when learning unfamiliar games.
Nukes in space? Orbital detector could sniff out warheads
A Nature Podcast episode examines a compact orbital detector designed to identify hidden nuclear devices and research on threats to Indigenous plant knowledge.
FENS Forum 2026
Europe’s leading neuroscience conference, bringing together researchers, clinicians, and innovators across molecular, cellular, systems, cognitive, and clinical neuroscience.
Predictive Coding Light
Current machine learning systems consume vastly more energy than biological brains. Neuromorphic systems aim to overcome this difference by mimicking the brain’s information coding via discrete voltage spikes. However, it remains unclear how both artificial and natural networks of spiking neurons can learn energy-efficient information processing strategies. Here we propose Predictive Coding Light (PCL), a recurrent hierarchical spiking neural network for unsupervised representation learning. In contrast to previous predictive coding approaches, PCL does not transmit prediction errors to higher processing stages. Instead, it suppresses the most predictable spikes and transmits a compressed representation of the input. Using only biologically plausible spike-timing based learning rules, PCL reproduces a wealth of findings on information processing in visual cortex and permits strong performance in downstream classification tasks. Overall, PCL offers a new approach to predictive coding and its implementation in natural and artificial spiking neural networks
Consciousness at the edge of chaos
Over the last 20 years, neuroimaging and electrophysiology techniques have become central to understanding the mechanisms that accompany loss and recovery of consciousness. Much of this research is performed in the context of healthy individuals with neurotypical brain dynamics. Yet, a true understanding of how consciousness emerges from the joint action of neurons has to account for how severely pathological brains, often showing phenotypes typical of unconsciousness, can nonetheless generate a subjective viewpoint. In this presentation, I will start from the context of Disorders of Consciousness and will discuss recent work aimed at finding generalizable signatures of consciousness that are reliable across a spectrum of brain electrophysiological phenotypes focusing in particular on the notion of edge-of-chaos criticality.
Computational Mechanisms of Predictive Processing in Brains and Machines
Predictive processing offers a unifying view of neural computation, proposing that brains continuously anticipate sensory input and update internal models based on prediction errors. In this talk, I will present converging evidence for the computational mechanisms underlying this framework across human neuroscience and deep neural networks. I will begin with recent work showing that large-scale distributed prediction-error encoding in the human brain directly predicts how sensory representations reorganize through predictive learning. I will then turn to PredNet, a popular predictive coding inspired deep network that has been widely used to model real-world biological vision systems. Using dynamic stimuli generated with our Spatiotemporal Style Transfer algorithm, we demonstrate that PredNet relies primarily on low-level spatiotemporal structure and remains insensitive to high-level content, revealing limits in its generalization capacity. Finally, I will discuss new recurrent vision models that integrate top-down feedback connections with intrinsic neural variability, uncovering a dual mechanism for robust sensory coding in which neural variability decorrelates unit responses, while top-down feedback stabilizes network dynamics. Together, these results outline how prediction error signaling and top-down feedback pathways shape adaptive sensory processing in biological and artificial systems.
Computational bio-imaging via inverse scattering
Optical imaging is a major research tool in the basic sciences, and is the only imaging modality that routinely enables non-ionized imaging with subcellular spatial resolutions and high imaging speeds. In biological imaging applications, however, optical imaging is limited by tissue scattering to short imaging depths. This prevents large-scale bio-imaging by allowing visualization of only the outer superficial layers of an organism, or specific components isolated from within the organism and prepared in-vitro.
Harnessing Artificial Intelligence to Fight Infectious Diseases
Charlene Lancaster speaks with Cesar de la Fuente about using artificial intelligence to discover novel antibiotics from organisms and genetic sources spanning spiders, archaea, woolly mammoths, and humans.
Introduction to protocols.io: Scientific collaboration through open protocols
Research articles and laboratory protocol organization often lack detailed instructions for replicating experiments. protocols.io is an open-access platform where researchers collaboratively create dynamic, interactive, step-by-step protocols that can be executed on mobile devices or the web. Researchers can easily and efficiently share protocols with colleagues, collaborators, the scientific community, or make them public. Real-time communication and interaction keep protocols up to date. Public protocols receive a DOI and enable open communication with authors and researchers to foster efficient experimentation and reproducibility.
Biomolecular condensates as drivers of neuroinflammation
Temporal Hierarchies in Reward and Behavioral Control
NF1 exon 51 alternative splicing: functional implications in Central Nervous System (CNS) Cells
Astrocytes: From Metabolism to Cognition
Different brain cell types exhibit distinct metabolic signatures that link energy economy to cellular function. Astrocytes and neurons, for instance, diverge dramatically in their reliance on glycolysis versus oxidative phosphorylation, underscoring that metabolic fuel efficiency is not uniform across cell types. A key factor shaping this divergence is the structural organization of the mitochondrial respiratory chain into supercomplexes. Specifically, complexes I (CI) and III (CIII) form a CI–CIII supercomplex, but the degree of this assembly varies by cell type. In neurons, CI is predominantly integrated into supercomplexes, resulting in highly efficient mitochondrial respiration and minimal reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation. Conversely, in astrocytes, a larger fraction of CI remains unassembled, freely existing apart from CIII, leading to reduced respiratory efficiency and elevated mitochondrial ROS production. Despite this apparent inefficiency, astrocytes boast a highly adaptable metabolism capable of responding to diverse stressors. Their looser CI–CIII organization allows for flexible ROS signaling, which activates antioxidant programs via transcription factors like Nrf2. This modular architecture enables astrocytes not only to balance energy production but also to support neuronal health and influence complex organismal behaviors.
Introduction to protocols.io: Scientific collaboration through open protocols
Research articles and laboratory protocol organization often lack detailed instructions for replicating experiments. protocols.io is an open-access platform where researchers collaboratively create dynamic, interactive, step-by-step protocols that can be executed on mobile devices or the web. Researchers can easily and efficiently share protocols with colleagues, collaborators, the scientific community, or make them public. Real-time communication and interaction keep protocols up to date. Public protocols receive a DOI and enable open communication with authors and researchers to foster efficient experimentation and reproducibility.
How the presynapse forms and functions”
Nervous system function relies on the polarized architecture of neurons, established by directional transport of pre- and postsynaptic cargoes. While delivery of postsynaptic components depends on the secretory pathway, the identity of the membrane compartment(s) that supply presynaptic active zone (AZ) and synaptic vesicle (SV) proteins is largely unknown. I will discuss our recent advances in our understanding of how key components of the presynaptic machinery for neurotransmitter release are transported and assembled focussing on our studies in genome-engineered human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived neurons. Specifically, I will focus on the composition and cell biological identity of the axonal transport vesicles that shuttle key components of neurotransmission to nascent synapses and on machinery for axonal transport and its control by signaling lipids. Our studies identify a crucial mechanism mediating the delivery of SV and active zone proteins to developing synapses and reveal connections to neurological disorders. In the second part of my talk, I will discuss how exocytosis and endocytosis are coupled to maintain presynaptic membrane homeostasis. I will present unpublished data regarding the role of membrane tension in the coupling of exocytosis and endocytosis at synapses. We have identified an endocytic BAR domain protein that is capable of sensing alterations in membrane tension caused by the exocytotic fusion of SVs to initiate compensatory endocytosis to restore plasma membrane area. Interference with this mechanism results in defects in the coupling of presynaptic exocytosis and SV recycling at human synapses.
The SIMple microscope: Development of a fibre-based platform for accessible SIM imaging in unconventional environments
Advancements in imaging speed, depth and resolution have made structured illumination microscopy (SIM) an increasingly powerful optical sectioning (OS) and super-resolution (SR) technique, but these developments remain inaccessible to many life science researchers due to the cost, optical complexity and delicacy of these instruments. We address these limitations by redesigning the optical path using in-line fibre components that are compact, lightweight and easily assembled in a “Plug & Play” modality, without compromising imaging performance. They can be integrated into an existing widefield microscope with a minimum of optical components and alignment, making OS-SIM more accessible to researchers with less optics experience. We also demonstrate a complete SR-SIM imaging system with dimensions 300 mm × 300 mm × 450 mm. We propose to enable accessible SIM imaging by utilising its compact, lightweight and robust design to transport it where it is needed, and image in “unconventional” environments where factors such as temperature and biosafety considerations currently limit imaging experiments.
OpenNeuro FitLins GLM: An Accessible, Semi-Automated Pipeline for OpenNeuro Task fMRI Analysis
In this talk, I will discuss the OpenNeuro Fitlins GLM package and provide an illustration of the analytic workflow. OpenNeuro FitLins GLM is a semi-automated pipeline that reduces barriers to analyzing task-based fMRI data from OpenNeuro's 600+ task datasets. Created for psychology, psychiatry and cognitive neuroscience researchers without extensive computational expertise, this tool automates what is largely a manual process and compilation of in-house scripts for data retrieval, validation, quality control, statistical modeling and reporting that, in some cases, may require weeks of effort. The workflow abides by open-science practices, enhancing reproducibility and incorporates community feedback for model improvement. The pipeline integrates BIDS-compliant datasets and fMRIPrep preprocessed derivatives, and dynamically creates BIDS Statistical Model specifications (with Fitlins) to perform common mass univariate [GLM] analyses. To enhance and standardize reporting, it generates comprehensive reports which includes design matrices, statistical maps and COBIDAS-aligned reporting that is fully reproducible from the model specifications and derivatives. OpenNeuro Fitlins GLM has been tested on over 30 datasets spanning 50+ unique fMRI tasks (e.g., working memory, social processing, emotion regulation, decision-making, motor paradigms), reducing analysis times from weeks to hours when using high-performance computers, thereby enabling researchers to conduct robust single-study, meta- and mega-analyses of task fMRI data with significantly improved accessibility, standardized reporting and reproducibility.
A personal journey on understanding intelligence
The focus of this talk is not about my research in AI or Robotics but my own journey on trying to do research and understand intelligence in a rapidly evolving research landscape. I will trace my path from conducting early-stage research during graduate school, to working on practical solutions within a startup environment, and finally to my current role where I participate in more structured research at a major tech company. Through these varied experiences, I will provide different perspectives on research and talk about how my core beliefs on intelligence have changed and sometimes even been compromised. There are no lessons to be learned from my stories, but hopefully they will be entertaining.
Understanding reward-guided learning using large-scale datasets
Understanding the neural mechanisms of reward-guided learning is a long-standing goal of computational neuroscience. Recent methodological innovations enable us to collect ever larger neural and behavioral datasets. This presents opportunities to achieve greater understanding of learning in the brain at scale, as well as methodological challenges. In the first part of the talk, I will discuss our recent insights into the mechanisms by which zebra finch songbirds learn to sing. Dopamine has been long thought to guide reward-based trial-and-error learning by encoding reward prediction errors. However, it is unknown whether the learning of natural behaviours, such as developmental vocal learning, occurs through dopamine-based reinforcement. Longitudinal recordings of dopamine and bird songs reveal that dopamine activity is indeed consistent with encoding a reward prediction error during naturalistic learning. In the second part of the talk, I will talk about recent work we are doing at DeepMind to develop tools for automatically discovering interpretable models of behavior directly from animal choice data. Our method, dubbed CogFunSearch, uses LLMs within an evolutionary search process in order to "discover" novel models in the form of Python programs that excel at accurately predicting animal behavior during reward-guided learning. The discovered programs reveal novel patterns of learning and choice behavior that update our understanding of how the brain solves reinforcement learning problems.
FLUXSynID: High-Resolution Synthetic Face Generation for Document and Live Capture Images
Synthetic face datasets are increasingly used to overcome the limitations of real-world biometric data, including privacy concerns, demographic imbalance, and high collection costs. However, many existing methods lack fine-grained control over identity attributes and fail to produce paired, identity-consistent images under structured capture conditions. In this talk, I will present FLUXSynID, a framework for generating high-resolution synthetic face datasets with user-defined identity attribute distributions and paired document-style and trusted live capture images. The dataset generated using FLUXSynID shows improved alignment with real-world identity distributions and greater diversity compared to prior work. I will also discuss how FLUXSynID’s dataset and generation tools can support research in face recognition and morphing attack detection (MAD), enhancing model robustness in both academic and practical applications.
“Brain theory, what is it or what should it be?”
n the neurosciences the need for some 'overarching' theory is sometimes expressed, but it is not always obvious what is meant by this. One can perhaps agree that in modern science observation and experimentation is normally complemented by 'theory', i.e. the development of theoretical concepts that help guiding and evaluating experiments and measurements. A deeper discussion of 'brain theory' will require the clarification of some further distictions, in particular: theory vs. model and brain research (and its theory) vs. neuroscience. Other questions are: Does a theory require mathematics? Or even differential equations? Today it is often taken for granted that the whole universe including everything in it, for example humans, animals, and plants, can be adequately treated by physics and therefore theoretical physics is the overarching theory. Even if this is the case, it has turned out that in some particular parts of physics (the historical example is thermodynamics) it may be useful to simplify the theory by introducing additional theoretical concepts that can in principle be 'reduced' to more complex descriptions on the 'microscopic' level of basic physical particals and forces. In this sense, brain theory may be regarded as part of theoretical neuroscience, which is inside biophysics and therefore inside physics, or theoretical physics. Still, in neuroscience and brain research, additional concepts are typically used to describe results and help guiding experimentation that are 'outside' physics, beginning with neurons and synapses, names of brain parts and areas, up to concepts like 'learning', 'motivation', 'attention'. Certainly, we do not yet have one theory that includes all these concepts. So 'brain theory' is still in a 'pre-newtonian' state. However, it may still be useful to understand in general the relations between a larger theory and its 'parts', or between microscopic and macroscopic theories, or between theories at different 'levels' of description. This is what I plan to do.
Functional Imaging of the Human Brain: A Window into the Organization of the Human Mind
Gene regulation networks in nervous system cancers: identification of novel drug targets
Neural circuits underlying sleep structure and functions
Sleep is an active state critical for processing emotional memories encoded during waking in both humans and animals. There is a remarkable overlap between the brain structures and circuits active during sleep, particularly rapid eye-movement (REM) sleep, and the those encoding emotions. Accordingly, disruptions in sleep quality or quantity, including REM sleep, are often associated with, and precede the onset of, nearly all affective psychiatric and mood disorders. In this context, a major biomedical challenge is to better understand the underlying mechanisms of the relationship between (REM) sleep and emotion encoding to improve treatments for mental health. This lecture will summarize our investigation of the cellular and circuit mechanisms underlying sleep architecture, sleep oscillations, and local brain dynamics across sleep-wake states using electrophysiological recordings combined with single-cell calcium imaging or optogenetics. The presentation will detail the discovery of a 'somato-dendritic decoupling'in prefrontal cortex pyramidal neurons underlying REM sleep-dependent stabilization of optimal emotional memory traces. This decoupling reflects a tonic inhibition at the somas of pyramidal cells, occurring simultaneously with a selective disinhibition of their dendritic arbors selectively during REM sleep. Recent findings on REM sleep-dependent subcortical inputs and neuromodulation of this decoupling will be discussed in the context of synaptic plasticity and the optimization of emotional responses in the maintenance of mental health.
From Spiking Predictive Coding to Learning Abstract Object Representation
In a first part of the talk, I will present Predictive Coding Light (PCL), a novel unsupervised learning architecture for spiking neural networks. In contrast to conventional predictive coding approaches, which only transmit prediction errors to higher processing stages, PCL learns inhibitory lateral and top-down connectivity to suppress the most predictable spikes and passes a compressed representation of the input to higher processing stages. We show that PCL reproduces a range of biological findings and exhibits a favorable tradeoff between energy consumption and downstream classification performance on challenging benchmarks. A second part of the talk will feature our lab’s efforts to explain how infants and toddlers might learn abstract object representations without supervision. I will present deep learning models that exploit the temporal and multimodal structure of their sensory inputs to learn representations of individual objects, object categories, or abstract super-categories such as „kitchen object“ in a fully unsupervised fashion. These models offer a parsimonious account of how abstract semantic knowledge may be rooted in children's embodied first-person experiences.
An Ecological and Objective Neural Marker of Implicit Unfamiliar Identity Recognition
We developed a novel paradigm measuring implicit identity recognition using Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation (FPVS) with EEG among 16 students and 12 police officers with normal face processing abilities. Participants' neural responses to a 1-Hz tagged oddball identity embedded within a 6-Hz image stream revealed implicit recognition with high-quality mugshots but not CCTV-like images, suggesting optimal resolution requirements. Our findings extend previous research by demonstrating that even unfamiliar identities can elicit robust neural recognition signatures through brief, repeated passive exposure. This approach offers potential for objective validation of face processing abilities in forensic applications, including assessment of facial examiners, Super-Recognisers, and eyewitnesses, potentially overcoming limitations of traditional behavioral assessment methods.
Open Hardware Microfluidics
What’s the point of having scientific and technological innovations when only a few can benefit from them? How can we make science more inclusive? Those questions are always in the back of my mind when we perform research in our laboratory, and we have a strong focus on the scientific accessibility of our developed methods from microfabrication to sensor development.
Astrocytes release glutamate by regulated exocytosis in health and disease
Astrocytes release glutamate by regulated exocytosis in health and disease Vladimir Parpura, International Translational Neuroscience Research Institute, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, P.R. China Parpura will present you with the evidence that astrocytes, a subtype of glial cells in the brain, can exocytotically release the neurotransmitter glutamate and how this release is regulated. Spatiotemporal characteristic of vesicular fusion that underlie glutamate release in astrocytes will be discussed. He will also present data on a translational project in which this release pathway can be targeted for the treatment of glioblastoma, the deadliest brain cancer.
“A Focus on 3D Printed Lenses: Rapid prototyping, low-cost microscopy and enhanced imaging for the life sciences”
High-quality glass lenses are commonplace in the design of optical instrumentation used across the biosciences. However, research-grade glass lenses are often costly, delicate and, depending on the prescription, can involve intricate and lengthy manufacturing - even more so in bioimaging applications. This seminar will outline 3D printing as a viable low-cost alternative for the manufacture of high-performance optical elements, where I will also discuss the creation of the world’s first fully 3D printed microscope and other implementations of 3D printed lenses. Our 3D printed lenses were generated using consumer-grade 3D printers and pose a 225x materials cost-saving compared to glass optics. Moreover, they can be produced in any lab or home environment and offer great potential for education and outreach. Following performance validation, our 3D printed optics were implemented in the production of a fully 3D printed microscope and demonstrated in histological imaging applications. We also applied low-cost fabrication methods to exotic lens geometries to enhance resolution and contrast across spatial scales and reveal new biological structures. Across these applications, our findings showed that 3D printed lenses are a viable substitute for commercial glass lenses, with the advantage of being relatively low-cost, accessible, and suitable for use in optical instruments. Combining 3D printed lenses with open-source 3D printed microscope chassis designs opens the doors for low-cost applications for rapid prototyping, low-resource field diagnostics, and the creation of cheap educational tools.
Memory Decoding Journal Club: "Synaptic architecture of a memory engram in the mouse hippocampus
Synaptic architecture of a memory engram in the mouse hippocampus
Understanding reward-guided learning using large-scale datasets
Understanding the neural mechanisms of reward-guided learning is a long-standing goal of computational neuroscience. Recent methodological innovations enable us to collect ever larger neural and behavioral datasets. This presents opportunities to achieve greater understanding of learning in the brain at scale, as well as methodological challenges. In the first part of the talk, I will discuss our recent insights into the mechanisms by which zebra finch songbirds learn to sing. Dopamine has been long thought to guide reward-based trial-and-error learning by encoding reward prediction errors. However, it is unknown whether the learning of natural behaviours, such as developmental vocal learning, occurs through dopamine-based reinforcement. Longitudinal recordings of dopamine and bird songs reveal that dopamine activity is indeed consistent with encoding a reward prediction error during naturalistic learning. In the second part of the talk, I will talk about recent work we are doing at DeepMind to develop tools for automatically discovering interpretable models of behavior directly from animal choice data. Our method, dubbed CogFunSearch, uses LLMs within an evolutionary search process in order to "discover" novel models in the form of Python programs that excel at accurately predicting animal behavior during reward-guided learning. The discovered programs reveal novel patterns of learning and choice behavior that update our understanding of how the brain solves reinforcement learning problems.
SSFN Webinar - Pain research
Harnessing Big Data in Neuroscience: From Mapping Brain Connectivity to Predicting Traumatic Brain Injury
Neuroscience is experiencing unprecedented growth in dataset size both within individual brains and across populations. Large-scale, multimodal datasets are transforming our understanding of brain structure and function, creating opportunities to address previously unexplored questions. However, managing this increasing data volume requires new training and technology approaches. Modern data technologies are reshaping neuroscience by enabling researchers to tackle complex questions within a Ph.D. or postdoctoral timeframe. I will discuss cloud-based platforms such as brainlife.io, that provide scalable, reproducible, and accessible computational infrastructure. Modern data technology can democratize neuroscience, accelerate discovery and foster scientific transparency and collaboration. Concrete examples will illustrate how these technologies can be applied to mapping brain connectivity, studying human learning and development, and developing predictive models for traumatic brain injury (TBI). By integrating cloud computing and scalable data-sharing frameworks, neuroscience can become more impactful, inclusive, and data-driven..
Recent views on pre-registration
A discussion on some recent perspectives on pre-registration, which has become a growing trend in the past few years. This is not just limited to neuroimaging, and it applies to most scientific fields. We will start with this overview editorial by Simmons et al. (2021): https://faculty.wharton.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/34-Simmons-Nelson-Simonsohn-2021a.pdf, and also talk about a more critical perspective by Pham & Oh (2021): https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michel-Pham/publication/349545600_Preregistration_Is_Neither_Sufficient_nor_Necessary_for_Good_Science/links/60fb311e2bf3553b29096aa7/Preregistration-Is-Neither-Sufficient-nor-Necessary-for-Good-Science.pdf. I would like us to discuss the pros and cons of pre-registration, and if we have time, I may do a demonstration of how to perform a pre-registration through the Open Science Framework.
Reading Scenes
Fear learning induces synaptic potentiation between engram neurons in the rat lateral amygdala
Fear learning induces synaptic potentiation between engram neurons in the rat lateral amygdala. This study by Marios Abatis et al. demonstrates how fear conditioning strengthens synaptic connections between engram cells in the lateral amygdala, revealed through optogenetic identification of neuronal ensembles and electrophysiological measurements. The work provides crucial insights into memory formation mechanisms at the synaptic level, with implications for understanding anxiety disorders and developing targeted interventions. Presented by Dr. Kenneth Hayworth, this journal club will explore the paper's methodology linking engram cell reactivation with synaptic plasticity measurements, and discuss implications for memory decoding research.
Deepfake emotional expressions trigger the uncanny valley brain response, even when they are not recognised as fake
Facial expressions are inherently dynamic, and our visual system is sensitive to subtle changes in their temporal sequence. However, researchers often use dynamic morphs of photographs—simplified, linear representations of motion—to study the neural correlates of dynamic face perception. To explore the brain's sensitivity to natural facial motion, we constructed a novel dynamic face database using generative neural networks, trained on a verified set of video-recorded emotional expressions. The resulting deepfakes, consciously indistinguishable from videos, enabled us to separate biological motion from photorealistic form. Results showed that conventional dynamic morphs elicit distinct responses in the brain compared to videos and photos, suggesting they violate expectations (n400) and have reduced social salience (late positive potential). This suggests that dynamic morphs misrepresent facial dynamism, resulting in misleading insights about the neural and behavioural correlates of face perception. Deepfakes and videos elicited largely similar neural responses, suggesting they could be used as a proxy for real faces in vision research, where video recordings cannot be experimentally manipulated. And yet, despite being consciously undetectable as fake, deepfakes elicited an expectation violation response in the brain. This points to a neural sensitivity to naturalistic facial motion, beyond conscious awareness. Despite some differences in neural responses, the realism and manipulability of deepfakes make them a valuable asset for research where videos are unfeasible. Using these stimuli, we proposed a novel marker for the conscious perception of naturalistic facial motion – Frontal delta activity – which was elevated for videos and deepfakes, but not for photos or dynamic morphs.
Neurosurgery & Consciousness: Bridging Science and Philosophy in the Age of AI
Overview of neurosurgery specialty interplay between neurology, psychiatry and neurosurgery. Discussion on benefits and disadvantages of classifications. Presentation of sub-specialties: trauma, oncology, functional, pediatric, vascular and spine. How does an ordinary day of a neurosurgeon look like; outpatient clinic, emergencies, pre/intra/post operative patient care. An ordinary operation. Myth-busting and practical insights of every day practice. An ordinary operation. Hint for research on clinical problems to be solved. The coming ethical frontiers of neuroprosthetics. In part two we will explore the explanatory gap and its significance. We will review the more than 200 theories of the hard problem of consciousness, from the prevailing to the unconventional. Finally, we are going to reflect on the AI advancements and the claims of LLMs becoming conscious
Memory Decoding Journal Club: Reconstructing a new hippocampal engram for systems reconsolidation and remote memory updating
Join us for the Memory Decoding Journal Club, a collaboration between the Carboncopies Foundation and BPF Aspirational Neuroscience. This month, we're diving into a groundbreaking paper: 'Reconstructing a new hippocampal engram for systems reconsolidation and remote memory updating' by Bo Lei, Bilin Kang, Yuejun Hao, Haoyu Yang, Zihan Zhong, Zihan Zhai, and Yi Zhong from Tsinghua University, Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, IDG/McGovern Institute of Brain Research, and Peking Union Medical College. Dr. Randal Koene will guide us through an engaging discussion on these exciting findings and their implications for neuroscience and memory research.
Decoding ketamine: Neurobiological mechanisms underlying its rapid antidepressant efficacy
Unlike traditional monoamine-based antidepressants that require weeks to exert effects, ketamine alleviates depression within hours, though its clinical use is limited by side effects. While ketamine was initially thought to work primarily through NMDA receptor (NMDAR) inhibition, our research reveals a more complex mechanism. We demonstrate that NMDAR inhibition alone cannot explain ketamine's sustained antidepressant effects, as other NMDAR antagonists like MK-801 lack similar efficacy. Instead, the (2R,6R)-hydroxynorketamine (HNK) metabolite appears critical, exhibiting antidepressant effects without ketamine's side effects. Paradoxically, our findings suggest an inverted U-shaped dose-response relationship where excessive NMDAR inhibition may actually impede antidepressant efficacy, while some level of NMDAR activation is necessary. The antidepressant actions of ketamine and (2R,6R)-HNK require AMPA receptor activation, leading to synaptic potentiation and upregulation of AMPA receptor subunits GluA1 and GluA2. Furthermore, NMDAR subunit GluN2A appears necessary and possibly sufficient for these effects. This research establishes NMDAR-GluN2A activation as a common downstream effector for rapid-acting antidepressants, regardless of their initial targets, offering promising directions for developing next-generation antidepressants with improved efficacy and reduced side effects.
SSFN Webinar - Hearing Research
COSYNE 2025
The COSYNE 2025 conference was held in Montreal with post-conference workshops in Mont-Tremblant, continuing to provide a premier forum for computational and systems neuroscience. Attendees exchanged cutting-edge research in a single-track main meeting and in-depth specialized workshops, reflecting Cosyne’s mission to understand how neural systems function.
Pharmacological exploitation of neurotrophins and their receptors to develop novel therapeutic approaches against neurodegenerative diseases and brain trauma
Neurotrophins (NGF, BDNF, NT-3) are endogenous growth factors that exert neuroprotective effects by preventing neuronal death and promoting neurogenesis. They act by binding to their respective high-affinity, pro-survival receptors TrkA, TrkB or TrkC, as well as to p75NTR death receptor. While these molecules have been shown to significantly slow or prevent neurodegeneration, their reduced bioavailability and inability to penetrate the blood-brain-barrier limit their use as potential therapeutics. To bypass these limitations, our research team has developed and patented small-sized, lipophilic compounds which selectively resemble neurotrophins’ effects, presenting preferable pharmacological properties and promoting neuroprotection and repair against neurodegeneration. In addition, the combination of these molecules with 3D cultured human neuronal cells, and their targeted delivery in the brain ventricles through soft robotic systems, could offer novel therapeutic approaches against neurodegenerative diseases and brain trauma.
PhenoSign - Molecular Dynamic Insights
Do You Know Your Blood Glucose Level? You Probably Should! A single measurement is not enough to truly understand your metabolic health. Blood glucose levels fluctuate dynamically, and meaningful insights require continuous monitoring over time. But glucose is just one example. Many other molecular concentrations in the body are not static. Their variations are influenced by individual physiology and overall health. PhenoSign, a Swiss MedTech startup, is on a mission to become the leader in real-time molecular analysis of complex fluids, supporting clinical decision-making and life sciences applications. By providing real-time, in-situ molecular insights, we aim to advance medicine and transform life sciences research. This talk will provide an overview of PhenoSign’s journey since its inception in 2022—our achievements, challenges, and the strategic roadmap we are executing to shape the future of real-time molecular diagnostics.
Brain Emulation Challenge Workshop
Brain Emulation Challenge workshop will tackle cutting-edge topics such as ground-truthing for validation, leveraging artificial datasets generated from virtual brain tissue, and the transformative potential of virtual brain platforms, such as applied to the forthcoming Brain Emulation Challenge.
LRRK2 – a master regulator of neurodegeneration: acting on multiple systems including neuroinflammatory signaling, vesicular trafficking, and cell death pathways
Structural & Functional Neuroplasticity in Children with Hemiplegia
About 30% of children with cerebral palsy have congenital hemiplegia, resulting from periventricular white matter injury, which impairs the use of one hand and disrupts bimanual co-ordination. Congenital hemiplegia has a profound effect on each child's life and, thus, is of great importance to the public health. Changes in brain organization (neuroplasticity) often occur following periventricular white matter injury. These changes vary widely depending on the timing, location, and extent of the injury, as well as the functional system involved. Currently, we have limited knowledge of neuroplasticity in children with congenital hemiplegia. As a result, we provide rehabilitation treatment to these children almost blindly based exclusively on behavioral data. In this talk, I will present recent research evidence of my team on understanding neuroplasticity in children with congenital hemiplegia by using a multimodal neuroimaging approach that combines data from structural and functional neuroimaging methods. I will further present preliminary data regarding functional improvements of upper extremities motor and sensory functions as a result of rehabilitation with a robotic system that involves active participation of the child in a video-game setup. Our research is essential for the development of novel or improved neurological rehabilitation strategies for children with congenital hemiplegia.
Digital Minds: Brain Development in the Age of Technology
Digital Minds: Brain Development in the Age of Technology examines how our increasingly connected world shapes mental and cognitive health. From screen time and social media to virtual interactions, this seminar delves into the latest research on how technology influences brain development, relationships, and emotional well-being. Join us to explore strategies for harnessing technology's benefits while mitigating its potential challenges, empowering you to thrive in a digital age.
Vision for perception versus vision for action: dissociable contributions of visual sensory drives from primary visual cortex and superior colliculus neurons to orienting behaviors
The primary visual cortex (V1) directly projects to the superior colliculus (SC) and is believed to provide sensory drive for eye movements. Consistent with this, a majority of saccade-related SC neurons also exhibit short-latency, stimulus-driven visual responses, which are additionally feature-tuned. However, direct neurophysiological comparisons of the visual response properties of the two anatomically-connected brain areas are surprisingly lacking, especially with respect to active looking behaviors. I will describe a series of experiments characterizing visual response properties in primate V1 and SC neurons, exploring feature dimensions like visual field location, spatial frequency, orientation, contrast, and luminance polarity. The results suggest a substantial, qualitative reformatting of SC visual responses when compared to V1. For example, SC visual response latencies are actively delayed, independent of individual neuron tuning preferences, as a function of increasing spatial frequency, and this phenomenon is directly correlated with saccadic reaction times. Such “coarse-to-fine” rank ordering of SC visual response latencies as a function of spatial frequency is much weaker in V1, suggesting a dissociation of V1 responses from saccade timing. Consistent with this, when we next explored trial-by-trial correlations of individual neurons’ visual response strengths and visual response latencies with saccadic reaction times, we found that most SC neurons exhibited, on a trial-by-trial basis, stronger and earlier visual responses for faster saccadic reaction times. Moreover, these correlations were substantially higher for visual-motor neurons in the intermediate and deep layers than for more superficial visual-only neurons. No such correlations existed systematically in V1. Thus, visual responses in SC and V1 serve fundamentally different roles in active vision: V1 jumpstarts sensing and image analysis, but SC jumpstarts moving. I will finish by demonstrating, using V1 reversible inactivation, that, despite reformatting of signals from V1 to the brainstem, V1 is still a necessary gateway for visually-driven oculomotor responses to occur, even for the most reflexive of eye movement phenomena. This is a fundamental difference from rodent studies demonstrating clear V1-independent processing in afferent visual pathways bypassing the geniculostriate one, and it demonstrates the importance of multi-species comparisons in the study of oculomotor control.
Neural architectures: what are they good for anyway?
The brain has a highly complex structure in terms of cell types and wiring between different regions. What is it for, if anything? I'll start this talk by asking what might an answer to this question even look like given that we can't run an alternative universe where our brains are structured differently. (Preview: we can do this with models!) I'll then talk about some of our work in two areas: (1) does the modular structure of the brain contribute to specialisation of function? (2) how do different cell types and architectures contribute to multimodal sensory processing?
Memory formation in hippocampal microcircuit
The centre of memory is the medial temporal lobe (MTL) and especially the hippocampus. In our research, a more flexible brain-inspired computational microcircuit of the CA1 region of the mammalian hippocampus was upgraded and used to examine how information retrieval could be affected under different conditions. Six models (1-6) were created by modulating different excitatory and inhibitory pathways. The results showed that the increase in the strength of the feedforward excitation was the most effective way to recall memories. In other words, that allows the system to access stored memories more accurately.
Brain macrophage transplantation for research and therapy development
FENS Forum 2024
Organised by FENS in partnership with the Austrian Neuroscience Association and the Hungarian Neuroscience Society, the FENS Forum 2024 will take place on 25–29 June 2024 in Vienna, Austria. The FENS Forum is Europe’s largest neuroscience congress, covering all areas of neuroscience from basic to translational research.
Computer and Information Science and Engineering: Future Computing Research (Future CoRe)
Active NSF solicitation (NSF 25-543) funding core computer and information science and engineering research. Proposals are accepted anytime, with target dates (second Thursday in September and first Thursday in February annually) for panel review cycles; projects up to $1,000,000 and 4 years.
EPSRC standard research grant, Nov 2023: responsive mode
EPSRC's responsive-mode standard research grant, 'Open - no closing date': applications are accepted continuously and batched internally for assessment. No specified upper limit on grant value or project length; EPSRC funds 80% of the full economic cost.
Individual Research Grants
DFG's central individual funding programme for research projects in all disciplines: 'The first proposal may be submitted at any time.' Duration is based on individual project needs, as a rule several years, with modules for staff, instrumentation and other project costs.
Division of Integrative Organismal Systems Core Programs (IOS)
NSF core-programs solicitation (NSF 24-546) supporting research on integrative organismal biology, including behavioral, developmental, neural and physiological systems. Proposals are accepted anytime, with an estimated $70,000,000 available per fiscal year across ~150 standard or continuing grants.
MRC: research grant: applicant-led
MRC's applicant-led responsive research grant, explicitly 'Open - no closing date': submit when the application is ready. No upper funding limit — the amount should be appropriate to the project — for up to five years, with MRC funding 80% of full economic cost.