Blog

In a remarkable turn of events this year, artificial intelligence discoveries were awarded two Nobel prizes in two days. While the prizes were in Physics and Chemistry, the Nobel laureates—Professor Geoffrey Hinton, Professor John Hopfield and Sir Demis Hassabis among others—have all made discoveries that are shaping neuroscience. At the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre (SWC), these advances are having a transformative impact on our research.

In the heart of Kosovo’s capital city Pristina, BrainCamp is changing lives. Founded and organised by SWC PhD alumni Egzona Morina, BrainCamp aims to introduce neuroscience education and career opportunities to young people in Kosovo. We spoke to Laura Dragusha, currently a student at Yale University, whose journey into neuroscience began after taking part.

SWC Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Jasmine Reggiani shares her experience writing about everything from splooting to Ozempic at IFLScience during an Association of British Science Writers Media Fellowship.

Two participants in the CaMinA computational neuroscience programme in Africa share how the course has influenced their careers and shaped their scientific journeys.

This week, the BrainGlobe Initiative team received recognition from UCL Open Science for their contribution to open-source software. BrainGlobe was founded in 2020 to improve the way neuroscientists handle and analyse neuroimaging data, and its tools have since been downloaded over 2.7 million times. 

Ryan Cini is a Research Technician, working in the Mrsic-Flogel and Behrens Labs. He is researching the grid cells that allow animals to understand their position in space by storing and integrating information about location, distance, and direction. He talked to us about his career and shares his advice for anyone considering working in neuroscience.

Laura Porta, Senior Research Software Engineer, speaks about her passion for making software tools that can benefit the neuroscience community.

Sanna Titus is a Research Assistant, studying and caring for Fiddler crabs in our aquariums, or as they have been fondly termed, “crabitats”. A marine biologist by training, she is working with her team to establish the crabs as a species for neuroscience research. Sanna talks to us about careers, bird impersonations, and her path to working neuroscience.

Optogenetics has transformed neuroscience. But as with any groundbreaking technique, it comes with its own set of challenges. Here’s the story of how one such challenge led to the discovery of off-target effects of light stimulation used to activate genetically encoded light channels and how these might be overcome.