Dan Butts

Are you an aspiring graduate student fascinated with neuroscience and enjoy computation? Apply to my lab at UMD for graduate school: we aim to develop a mechanistic understanding of cortical function using novel computational tools and large-scale neurophys. data. Postdoc candidates welcome too!

The Conway Lab (NIH) and Butts Lab (UMD) are seeking a brilliant postdoc to study high-acuity vision combining large-scale electrophys and deep computational modeling. Prior experience (broadly speaking) is recommended: please email Dan Butts with CV and brief research statement.

NIH advisory council meetings are necessary to award the best grant proposals, which is a separate process than scientifically evaluating them. NIH has resumed study sections (scientific ranking), but funding decisions are still not permitted, despite the courts ordering them to resume.

This is horrific.

Today, a collaborative grant we submitted to the National Institutes of Health won't be reviewed. No one's will.

Grant reviews have been halted for study section after study section.

Yes, I am mad. But, folks outside science should be even madder.

a 🧵

In your New Year’s resolutions for 2025, consider public outreach If every person in the neuroscience community committed to doing one thing, imagine the cumulative difference it would make.

In the era of Trump 2.0, we're calling on all scientists+ to unpack science for the public. This is much bigger than anyone of us. But if we all do one thing, imagine the cumulative impact!

It need not be a burden. More here, in @thetransmitter.bsky.social.

www.thetransmitter.org/craft-and-ca...

More holiday gifts from the lab. Out in Cell Reports, beautiful work by Dr. Karolina Socha reveals how nasal, back-to-front visual motion can trigger arousal-related behavioral state changes that modulate responsiveness and stimulus selectivity in the mouse visual thalamus.
doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...