Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Kim Stachenfeld, PhD @neurokim.bsky.social · Aug 7

hahah brings me back!

Reposted by Kim Stachenfeld, PhD

TReND-CaMinA @trendcamina.bsky.social · Jul 22

Our summer program values mentorship as much as scientific skill-building, connecting Africa’s talents with experts in both #academia and #industry. Grateful to @neurokim.bsky.social & @ankahira.bsky.social for inspiring our 2025 cohort. @columbiauniversity.bsky.social @astra-zeneca.bsky.social

3 7

Reposted by Kim Stachenfeld, PhD

Jesse Geerts @jessegeerts.bsky.social · Jun 6

🧠 How do transformers learn relational reasoning? We trained small transformers on transitive inference (if A>B and B>C, then A>C) and discovered striking differences between learning paradigms. Our latest work reveals when and why AI systems generalize beyond training data 🤖

2 15 66

Kim Stachenfeld, PhD @neurokim.bsky.social · Jun 16

New work on relational reasoning in transformers!

TLDR: Inductive biases of In-Weight and In-Context Learning in transformers are really different for relational reasoning, and pretraining can make a big difference for in-context.

Check out @jessegeerts.bsky.social's thread for more!

1 6 27

Reposted by Kim Stachenfeld, PhD

Grace Lindsay @neurograce.bsky.social · May 23

This is fucking insane

NPR @npr.org · May 22

JUST IN: International students make up more than a quarter of Harvard University's student body. Harvard says the government's actions, which could cut off a major revenue stream, are "unlawful."

Trump administration revokes Harvard's ability to enroll international students

International students make up more than a quarter of Harvard University's student body. Harvard says the government's actions, which could cut off a major revenue stream, are "unlawful."

www.npr.org

10 46

Reposted by Kim Stachenfeld, PhD

Ruairidh McLennan Battleday @battleday.bsky.social · Apr 24

💥 Do we now have all the components necessary to reach #AGI, or are there more discoveries to be made? Can the study of the brain help provide them?

We tackle these questions and more at our Conference on the Mathematics of Neuroscience and AI in sun-soaked Split, Croatia:

www.neuromonster.org

1 4 13

Kim Stachenfeld, PhD @neurokim.bsky.social · Mar 31

Tomorrow is our @cosynemeeting.bsky.social workshop on Graph Neural Networks! From molecules to circuits to biomechanics to reasoning behaviors to social behaviors, neuroscience is rich with geometrically structured data.

Our goal: demystify GNNs, talk opportunities for 🧠

Brian DePasquale @briandepasquale.bsky.social · Mar 31

@cosynemeeting.bsky.social Also! Don’t miss a 💡 insightful tutorial on GNNs for connectomics analysis tomorrow at the workshop! Details here: sites.google.com/bu.edu/gnnwo...

gnnworkshop cosyne2025

It's All Connected!

sites.google.com

15

Reposted by Kim Stachenfeld, PhD

Brian DePasquale @briandepasquale.bsky.social · Mar 30

@cosynemeeting.bsky.social workshops are almost here! Join GNN workshop w @neurokim.bsky.social and Sam Lewallen to hear @herrsaalfeld.bsky.social head of computation @hhmijanelia.bsky.social present on GNNs for learning structure and function underlying neural assemblies #cosyne2025

1 2 9

Reposted by Kim Stachenfeld, PhD

Brian DePasquale @briandepasquale.bsky.social · Mar 30

Her lab does impressive foundational work on geometric statistics and manifold learning, sure to be an amazing talk! Come for the GNNs, stay for the manifolds! #cosyne2025 @neurokim.bsky.social

1 4

Reposted by Kim Stachenfeld, PhD

Brian DePasquale @briandepasquale.bsky.social · Mar 30

More 🔥🔥 speakers at @cosynemeeting.bsky.social GNN workshop: @ninamiolane.bsky.social who runs the @geometric-intel.bsky.social lab at UCSB. She will take us beyond 🚀🚀 GNNs, presenting a survey of message passing topological neural networks for neuroscience

1 4 6

Reposted by Kim Stachenfeld, PhD

Brian DePasquale @briandepasquale.bsky.social · Mar 30

Rounding out our speakers @cosynemeeting.bsky.social GNN workshop is @dom-beaini.bsky.social of @mila-quebec.bsky.social and @valenceai.bsky.social. Come hear him tell us how to learn a…MOLECULE! Don’t forget brains 🧠 are made of chemicals ⚗️ and chemicals + graphs = 🫶

1 2 4

Reposted by Kim Stachenfeld, PhD

Kendra Wilson @kendrawilsonnv.bsky.social · Mar 29

Sign these petitions to release detained students:
www.change.org/p/free-mahmo...

www.change.org/p/free-rumey...

www.change.org/p/release-un...

@change.org

Sign the Petition

Free Mahmoud Khalil. Stop His Unjust Detention.

www.change.org

2

Kim Stachenfeld, PhD @neurokim.bsky.social · Mar 28

If folks know of opportunities to do this, I'd love to hear about them (DM me). This isn't something I (...like lots of us) have experience in maybe, but no time like the present.

Kim Stachenfeld, PhD @neurokim.bsky.social · Mar 28

Universities need to fight back with what we've got, which is not nothing: legal, comms, organizing... Plus, there are a whole bunch of us! 60 universities on this list, all with a common economic interest (not to mention a moral one).
www.reuters.com/world/us/the...

Trump officials target dozens of colleges for antisemitism - even those cleared by probes

When Muhlenberg College learned in January 2024 - as pro-Palestinian protests were sweeping campuses across the United States - that it was under investigation for discriminating against Jewish students, the small liberal arts institution in Pennsylvania took action.

www.reuters.com

1

Kim Stachenfeld, PhD @neurokim.bsky.social · Mar 28

This is not just happening at Columbia. This is happening all over, to students, who have espoused a political opinion. Free speech, due process, intellectual freedom... we need that for stuff.

1

Kim Stachenfeld, PhD @neurokim.bsky.social · Mar 28

Rumeysa was sent from Massachusetts to Louisiana -- just like Mahmoud Khalil -- despite a court blocking her removal from the state. She had an asthma attack while being sent to Louisiana.
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

Tufts student had asthma attack after ICE arrest, attorneys say

Lawyers for Rumeysa Ozturk demand her release after ‘shocking, cruel and unconstitutional’ arrest

www.independent.co.uk

2 1

Kim Stachenfeld, PhD @neurokim.bsky.social · Mar 28

There is footage of her arrest by plain clothes officers. I cannot imagine how terrifying it must be to have strangers walk up to you on your way to dinner and put you in a car and you're gone.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuFI...

Surveillance shows Tufts graduate student detained

YouTube video by WCVB Channel 5 Boston

www.youtube.com

1

Kim Stachenfeld, PhD @neurokim.bsky.social · Mar 28

If you are a member of the Tufts community, there is a petition to encourage the Tufts administration to take a more active role in protecting and supporting at-risk students.
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Tufts community calls the Tufts administration to action

We, members of the Tufts community, are appalled and enraged by the unlawful abduction on Tufts PhD Fulbright student Rümeysa Öztürk by federal authorities. We call on the Tufts administration to comm...

docs.google.com

1 1

Kim Stachenfeld, PhD @neurokim.bsky.social · Mar 28

Beautiful piece about Rumeysa Öztürk, the tufts student who was abducted and detained for political speech, which paints a picture of a warm, compassionate, beloved member of the Tufts community (my alma mater) from those who know her.

as.tufts.edu/epcshd/news-...

Rumeysa Öztürk: Our Student, Teacher, Colleague, and Friend | Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study & Human Development

as.tufts.edu

1 3 19

Reposted by Kim Stachenfeld, PhD

Brian DePasquale @briandepasquale.bsky.social · Mar 21

Just over a week to #cosyne2025 workshops! Speaker profile number 2 for GNN workshop w/ @neurokim.bsky.social and Sam Lewallen is @kristinmbranson.bsky.social of @hhmijanelia.bsky.social!

Kristin’s lab develops cutting edge machine vision approaches for quantitatively studying animal behavior.

1 4 11

Reposted by Kim Stachenfeld, PhD

Jascha Achterberg @achterbrain.bsky.social · Mar 23

Looking for an exciting fellowship in AI & Neuro, with competitive salary (~£100k)? We got a new position in the lab at Oxford, working with @somnirons.bsky.social and me! 🧪

Our project: encode.pillar.vc/projects/beh...

General info: encode.pillar.vc

#compneuro #neuroai #neuroscience #sciencejobs

ARIA Opportunity Space: Scalable Neural Interfaces

encode.pillar.vc

1 26 41

Kim Stachenfeld, PhD @neurokim.bsky.social · Mar 18

Finally this thread was shamelessly plagiarized from @kennethmarino.bsky.social 's thread on X (thanks kenny!):

x.com/Kenneth_Mari...

Kim Stachenfeld, PhD @neurokim.bsky.social · Mar 18

Thanks to colleagues @ndrewliu.bsky.social, Henry Prior, Gargi Balasubramanian, Rivka Moroshko, Amir Zait, Ilia Labzovsky, Danny Karmon, Ishita Dasgupta, and @kennethmarino.bsky.social at Google DeepMind for a fun and super interdisciplinary collab!! 🧠🤖

1

Kim Stachenfeld, PhD @neurokim.bsky.social · Mar 18

For more information, check out the paper
openreview.net/pdf?id=yORSk...

and the open-source code + tutorial, where you can make custom dataset generators.
github.com/google-deepm...

Talk to @kennethmarino.bsky.social at #ICLR2025 in Singapore if you want to learn more!

Andrew Liu (@ndrewliu.bsky.social)

what IS machine learning Background: Computer Vision, 3D generative, post-training new capabilities Deepmind Researcher | UC Berkeley 2018

ndrewliu.bsky.social

1 2

Kim Stachenfeld, PhD @neurokim.bsky.social · Mar 18

Third, it lets us generate custom datasets and configurations which can be used, for instance, compare reasoning behaviors across humans and models.

This also can be useful for experimental psychologists for generating new experiments in humans, and piloting experiments with LLMs.

1