Michael Deistler

SBI Hackathon Grenoble is a wrap! 🎉

35 researchers and a great hybrid format of 1.5 days of tutorials + 1.5 days of applied hackathon. Many went from “having heard of sbi” to applying full SBI workflows to their own research projects.

🧵👇

Finally got the job ad—looking for 2 PhD students to start spring next year:

www.gao-unit.com/join-us/

If comp neuro, ML, and AI4Neuro is your thing, or you just nerd out over brain recordings, apply!

I'm at neurips. DM me here / on the conference app or email if you want to meet 🏖️🌮

AI tool for brain simulations links cellular detail to cognitive functions — MACHINE LEARNING for science For decades, brain simulations have either been largely simplified, or they could not perform cognitive tasks. A new AI tool opens possibilities to build brain simulations that can achieve both.

On our blog: For decades, brain simulations have either been largely simplified, or they could not perform cognitive tasks. #JAXLEY, a new AI tool, opens possibilities to build brain simulations that overcome both limitations: www.machinelearningforscience.de/en/jaxley-ai... #AIforScience

Simulation-based Inference (SBI) brings the power of generative modeling to parameter inference in science and engineering. We have now written a practical guide on how to effectively use these methods across domains 🔭👁️‍🗨️🦞

Eine neue Software ermöglicht Gehirnsimulationen, die sowohl detailliert die Prozesse im Gehirn imitieren als auch anspruchsvolle kognitive Aufgaben lösen können. Entwickelt wurde das Programm von einem Forschungsteam am Exzellenzcluster @ ml4science.bsky.social der Universität Tübingen.

Jaxley: differentiable simulation enables large-scale training of detailed biophysical models of neural dynamics - Nature Methods Jaxley is a versatile platform for biophysical modeling in neuroscience. It allows efficiently simulating large-scale biophysical models on CPUs, GPUs and TPUs. Model parameters can be optimized with ...

Our work on training biophysical models with Jaxley is now out in @natmethods.nature.com. Led by @deismic.bsky.social, with @philipp.hertie.ai, @ppjgoncalves.bsky.social & @jakhmack.bsky.social et al.

Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Huge thank you to all colleagues and collaborators on this project: @kyrakadhim.bsky.social, @matthijspals.bsky.social, @jnsbck.de, @hzwei.dev, Manuel Gloeckler, @lappalainenjk.bsky.social, @coschroeder.bsky.social, @philipp.hertie.ai, @ppjgoncalves.bsky.social, @jakhmack.bsky.social!

Jaxley: differentiable simulation enables large-scale training of detailed biophysical models of neural dynamics - Nature Methods Jaxley is a versatile platform for biophysical modeling in neuroscience. It allows efficiently simulating large-scale biophysical models on CPUs, GPUs and TPUs. Model parameters can be optimized with ...

I am super happy to share that our project on training biophysical models with Jaxley is now published in Nature Methods: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🎉 sbi participated in GSoC 2025 through @numfocus.bsky.social and it was a great success: our two students contributed major new features and substantial internal improvements: 🧵 👇

An ion channel omnimodel for standardized biophysical neuron modelling Biophysical neuron modeling is an indispensable tool in neuroscience research, with the combination of diverse ion channel kinetics and morphologies being used to explain various single-neuron propert...

“Mapping ion channel function” doi.org/10.7554/eLif... isn’t exactly a citation slayer, but it’s still one of my favourites (& my first independent project). Today we push pt 2, where we trace code origin & unite almost all channel models in a common expression. Boom! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

a man wearing a white shirt and tie smiles in front of a window ALT: a man wearing a white shirt and tie smiles in front of a window

I've been waiting some years to make this joke and now it’s real:

I conned somebody into giving me a faculty job!

I’m starting as a W1 Tenure-Track Professor at Goethe University Frankfurt in a week (lol), in the Faculty of CS and Math

and I'm recruiting PhD students 🤗

From hackathon to release: sbi v0.25 is here! 🎉

What happens when dozens of SBI researchers and practitioners collaborate for a week? New inference methods, new documentation, lots of new embedding networks, a bridge to pyro and a bridge between flow matching and score-based methods 🤯

1/7 🧵

Simulation-Based Inference: A Practical Guide A central challenge in many areas of science and engineering is to identify model parameters that are consistent with prior knowledge and empirical data. Bayesian inference offers a principled framewo...

Looky Looky! 😍🥳👏
arxiv.org/abs/2508.12939
Super fun project, I ❤️ed coauthoring w/ @sbi-devs.bsky.social.
Great lead by @deismic.bsky.social & @janboelts.bsky.social. Contribs by many talented people @jakhmack.bsky.social. 🙏 to #BenjaminKurtMiller for the kickstart! @helmholtzai.bsky.social

Thanks @francois-rozet.bsky.social! The guide for making these figures is public: github.com/mackelab/fig...

📢 I am looking for AI post-doc/research/engineer positions in Europe (Paris, London, Zurich, ...) starting 2026. My work revolves around generative modeling and AI for Science, with 4+ publications at top conferences during my PhD. If you are hiring, please reach out! If not, please repost 🔁

🎓Hiring now! 🧠 Join us at the exciting intersection of ML and Neuroscience! #AI4science
We’re looking for PhDs, Postdocs and Scientific Programmers that want to use deep learning to build, optimize and study mechanistic models of neural computations. Full details: www.mackelab.org/jobs/ 1/5

Postdoc position: Computational methods for neurodegeneration research - VIB About the labs The Verstreken Lab and the Gonçalves Lab are based in Leuven, Belgium and part of the

Exciting project in Parkinson's disease! Patrik Verstreken's lab (verstrekenlab.sites.vib.be) and my lab are looking for a postdoc to develop and apply ML methods to the analysis of exciting brain-on-chip data. Please spread the word!

More details at: jobs.vib.be/j/110908/pos...

🎉 Exciting news! We are lauching an sbi office hour!

Join the sbi developers Thursdays 09:45-10:15am CET via Zoom (link: sbi Discord's "office hours" channel).

Get guidance on contributing, explore sbi for your research, or troubleshoot issues. Come chat with us! 🤗

github.com/sbi-dev/sbi/...

We are looking to hire a Senior Scientist or #Postdoc to study brains, biophysics, and behaviour using #Drosophila as a model. Please spread the word!

www.medunigraz.at/en/job-openi...

Pull requests · sbi-dev/sbi sbi is a Python package for simulation-based inference, designed to meet the needs of both researchers and practitioners. Whether you need fine-grained control or an easy-to-use interface, sbi has ...

It's been a blast, thanks to @sbi-devs.bsky.social ! This week's hackathon was phenomenal! 🙏 😍 The sbi hackathon welcomed about 25 people in Tübingen with contributions spanning the globe , e.g. 🇺🇸🇯🇵🇧🇪🇩🇪. Wanna see, what we did? Check out the PRs👇
github.com/sbi-dev/sbi/...

sbi 0.24.0 is out! 🎉 This comes with important new features:
- 🎯 Score-based i.i.d sampling
- 🔀 Simultaneous estimation of multiple discrete and continuous parameters or data.
- 📊: mini-sbibm for quick benchmarking.

Just in time for our 1-week SBI hackathon starting tomorrow---stay tuned for more!

ZAPBench ZAPBench evaluates how well different models can predict the activity of over 70,000 neurons in a novel larval zebrafish dataset.

⚡️ Excited to introduce ZAPBench, our #ICLR2025 spotlight: The Zebrafish Activity Prediction Benchmark measures progress in predicting neural activity within an entire vertebrate brain (70k+ neurons!)

Explore interactive visualizations, datasets, code + paper: google-research.github.io/zapbench

🧠🧪

Together with @dendritesgr.bsky.social, we’ll be hosting a tutorial on constructing and optimizing biophysical models (via Jaxley & DendroTweaks) 🚀

Join us in Florence if you like dendrites, biophysics, or optimization!

1) Some exciting science in turbulent times:

How do mice distinguish self-generated vs. object-generated looming stimuli? Our new study combines VR and neural recordings from superior colliculus (SC) 🧠🐭 to explore this question.

Check out our preprint doi.org/10.1101/2024... 🧵

🚀 Excited to share my latest paper! 📄✨ This project started at the beginning of the pandemic and took longer than expected, but that’s the beauty of science! 🧬🔬 Check it out in the following threads! #PandemicProjects

My post comes a bit late because of TAing duties in @imbizo.bsky.social🇿🇦(1/14)

🙏 Please help us improve the SBI toolbox! 🙏

In preparation for the upcoming SBI Hackathon, we’re running a user study to learn what you like, what we can improve, and how we can grow.

👉 Please share your thoughts here: forms.gle/foHK7myV2oaK...

Your input will make a big difference—thank you! 🙌

🎉 Just in time for the end of the year, we’ve released a new version of sbi!

📦 v0.23.3 comes packed with exciting features, bug fixes, and docs updates to make sbi smoother and more robust. Check it out! 👇

🔗 Full changelog: github.com/sbi-dev/sbi/...

Apropos of never ending discussions about whether ANNs are "good" models of the nervous system, here is a slide I present to masters students showing a network that is found in motor control circuits *across phyla* (that's pretty ubiquitous!) I ask them to guess what it does...

The SBI package has a public discord server now! 🌍 It is open for users or (aspiring) contributors, or for researchers interested in simulations or Bayesian inference with neural networks. See you there! 👋