The rockefeller university

More than two dozen blitz presentations showcased campus research projects at the first-ever Neuroscience Jamboree. Postdoc Silas Busch, one of the participants, pictured here. (Credit: Chris Taggart)

Neuroscience researchers at Rockefeller study different topics spread across many labs, but they share a common goal: to uncover fundamental truths about the brain. Achieving this goal requires an inherently multiplexed approach that spans different scales, from the structure of individual proteins to the dynamics of neural circuits and the behaviors they produce.

That’s why more than two dozen graduate students and postdocs from 11 neuroscience groups came together on June 26 for the inaugural Price Family Center Jamboree, where they gave blitz presentations of their research projects and findings.

“We thought an event packed with short but informative talks from all the labs supported by the Price Family Center for the Social Brain would be a great way to get to know each other and learn about all the great work being done here,” says Juliana Rhee, a postdoc in the Laboratory of Neurophysiology and Behavior, headed by Vanessa Ruta, who also directs the center.

“It was a great chance for everyone to practice speaking to an audience,” adds postdoc Sachin Sethi, of the Maimon lab.

The five-minute presentations covered a wide range of subjects, including collective sickness behavior, vocal learning, audio and visual processing, motor regions, memory formation,  neuronal feeding circuits, navigation, courtship, evolution, and many more.

“The talks gave a wonderful sense of the breadth of neuroscience on campus,” says Ruta. “Much of it was directly connected to social neuroscience, but the symposium also highlighted more fundamental questions about brain function that transcend any single behavioral context.”

The presentations were interspersed with short breaks as well as lunch so that attendees could meet and make connections, says Sara Omer, a graduate student in the Bargmann lab, and one of the eight Price Fellows who worked closely together to organize the event. “New collaborative projects may emerge from the discussions that were had.”

“While we all had the ideas, the person who really made it happen was Katie Keller,” Omer says. Keller is a research technician in the Ruta lab. “She organized all the logistics of the rooms, the food, the AV support, and more.”

Beyond the research, there’s significant community-building value in an event like the Jamboree, says Ruta. “One of the goals of the Price Family Center is to help build bridges across labs and fields, and a trainee-led symposium is a particularly meaningful way to do that,” she says. “It also gives students and postdocs an active role in shaping the intellectual community on campus.”

The organizers hope to make the Jamboree a yearly event where researchers with ongoing projects can catch up on each other’s work and new students can experience the breadth of social neuroscience research on campus.

A related—and more frequent—event launched and hosted by the Price Fellows is the Data Club, a monthly casual meetup at which one or two trainees presents a small piece of a project, followed by open discussion and brainstorming.

“It’s an opportunity to share and discuss early stage data and ideas and get feedback from people across neuro and neuro-adjacent fields,” says Katherine Anderson, a postdoctoral scientist in the Jarvis lab. “This could be a dataset or a video of something interesting, a method you are trying to apply to data, an engineering challenge, or really anything you’re excited about.”

“Early feedback can have the greatest impact on shaping project trajectories and sparking new collaborations,” Ruta explains.

Adds graduate student Santiago Otero Coronel, of the Vaziri and Freiwald labs, “It’s also a great way for research assistants, graduate students, and postdocs to stay up to date on the latest neuroscience being done at Rockefeller.”

The next two Data Club events will be held on July 27 and August 17 at 12:30–1:30 pm in CRC 406.