Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)

Paying for your own publishing rights? That’s what some publishers are proposing. HHMI's Bodo Stern and UK Research and Innovation's Rachel Bruce explore an alternative: a transparent fee-for-service model. #OpenAccess #OpenScience

🚨 Final call to finish your application! Janelia’s Theory Fellow competition closes Nov. 3 at 3PM ET. Don’t miss this opportunity to: ✅ Join a fully funded 3-year fellowship ✅ Work at the intersection of computation, theory & biology ✅ Collaborate across disciplines and receive expert mentorship If you're an early-career researcher or soon-to-be PhD, this is your chance to pursue bold, interdisciplinary research in a uniquely collaborative environment. 👉 Finish your application: https://lnkd.in/ezd-36rS #HHMIJanelia #ScienceCareers #ComputationalBiology

4 HHMI Investigators have been elected to The National Academy of Medicine!     Election to the Academy is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine. Learn how these investigators are advancing our understanding of biology and human health: https://hhmi.news/4oxodfS #NAMmtg

"Why bats?" That's a question that HHMI Investigator Michael Yartsev, who spends his days trying to understand the neural computations that are happening in their brains, gets asked a lot. For Michael, the head of the Neurobat Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, the flying mammals offer a unique opportunity to study how the brain represents 3D space. Bat research is also a challenge. The more other scientists tell Michael, “This sounds crazy. This research will never work,” the more excited he becomes. “Most days, I’m honestly just shocked that anyone is paying me to do this.” Michael studies the relationship between brains and natural behavior. Bats have extraordinary navigational, communication, and social skills, which have been studied under controlled laboratory settings. Michael and his team study how these behaviors work together in a naturalistic foraging situation. The team develops wireless neural recording technologies that allow them to record hundreds of neurons simultaneously. The bats are in rapid, spontaneous flight during those recordings, creating an added technical challenge. “My lab always starts with the most interesting question we can think of, and we assume that the question is answerable—we take a leap of faith. Only then do we start wondering how we’re going to answer it.”

Congratulations to Rockefeller's Jeffrey M. Friedman, who has been awarded the 2025 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research, one of the nation’s most prestigious prizes in biomedicine. Friedman is recognized for his discovery of the hormone leptin, which established a biological basis for obesity, led to a life-saving treatment for people with lipodystrophy, and opened the era of molecular exploration in the field of obesity research. He discovered that the mutated gene in a mouse model of obesity encodes a peptide hormone, leptin, which is made by fat cells, and showed that leptin levels increase in parallel with body fat, reducing appetite and stimulating activity. Conversely, genetic loss of leptin promotes obesity with nearly insatiable appetite in humans as well as mice. Friedman’s work provided the first demonstration that obesity was not simply attributable to a lack of willpower. Learn more below.

🎉Congrats to Freeman Hrabowski Scholar Ishmail Abdus-Saboor on receiving the The National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award! Ishmail’s research will explore how sense of touch contributes to communal behaviors. Uncovering the neural pathways, genes, and molecules that underlie these behaviors could help develop treatments for conditions like autism and depression in which these behaviors are weakened.

Allison Truhlar is a Software Engineer on the Scientific Computing Software team at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus, developing web applications that help scientists conduct and publicize their research. Allison created the Janelia Open Science Software Initiative (OSSI) website, which showcases software developed at Janelia. https://ossi.janelia.org/ She also works on apps that directly support researchers, including an app for controlling imaging experiments & an app to transform how image data are shared at Janelia. Allison values how Janelia encourages collaboration among researchers at all levels and minimizes barriers to trying new ideas and making mistakes. “It's really that experimental atmosphere here of, ‘Just try it out and see how it works.’” Allison first became interested in science when she joined the environmental club in high school. “I liked the side of science where you can do things to benefit society or the Earth.’” That desire to do meaningful work guided Allison’s education, leading her to earn a bachelor’s degree and PhD in biological and environmental engineering from Cornell University. She also holds a master’s degree in biological sciences from the University of Cambridge. After her PhD, Allison did a postdoc with the New York State Water Resource Institute, focusing on road culvert flooding risk. She then worked as a research fellow for the American Geophysical Union and as a AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowships Fellow and program manager at the U.S. Department of Energy. Allison then followed her curiosity to pursue a new technical role supporting science. With encouragement from her wife and a financial gift her father had left her, she took classes in web development, gaining skills that aligned with a position at Janelia. “It was scary, but it felt like it was the right time for it.” Outside of work, Allison enjoys running. She also bakes with her 3-year-old son, who likes to help her use the stand mixer.

📢 Apply by Dec. 3 to pursue your PhD thesis research at Janelia. Janelia offers two graduate research opportunities in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Spend your first year at Hopkins completing courses and rotations, then carry out your thesis research in a Janelia lab. 🧠 Joint Graduate Program in Neuroscience: Explore neuroscience at every level, spanning cellular, behavioral, computational, and systems neuroscience. 🧬 Cross-Disciplinary Graduate Program in Biomedical Sciences (XDBio): Design a personalized curriculum guided by your interests, with training options that bridge biology, engineering, computer science, physics, chemistry, and medicine. In both programs at Janelia, you can collaborate with tool-builders and shared resource teams to accelerate discovery. 🔗 Learn more and apply: janelia.org/graduate

Joaquín Lilao Garzón is a Postdoctoral Scientist in the Espinosa Medina Lab at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus, where he works on creating 3D visualizations of how nerves that connect to the pancreas form during development. Figuring out how each neuron knows where to go could help scientists better understand how to treat diseases of the pancreas. Joaquín applied to Janelia after meeting Group Leader Isabel Espinosa Medina at a conference in Portugal. Isabel was looking to hire someone with Joaquín’s experience, and she pitched a project to him. “I was like, ‘OK, yeah, that’s what I want to do.’” At Janelia, Joaquín loves his work and the opportunity to explore the visual facets of scientific research through the advanced imaging technologies available at the research campus. He also appreciates the growing developmental biology community and the atmosphere that his colleagues have created. “I've been here for two years, and I haven't found a person that is not nice. That's impressive, to have that kind of community.” As a child, Joaquín liked nature and was curious about the world. His parents gave him a microscope as a gift, a functional toy he loved so much that he still has it today. After high school, Joaquín wanted to stay near his hometown of Teruel, Spain, so he enrolled in a two-year vocational training program to become a hospital lab technician. When he struggled to find a job during the Great Recession, Joaquín started a five-year bachelor’s degree program in biology at the Universitat de València. “It was hard, but I decided to try, and I actually loved it.” With that success, Joaquín became the first in his family to get a university degree. Joaquín also earned his master’s degree in molecular, cellular, and genetic biology at the University of Valencia. He eventually pursued his PhD in applied research in health sciences at Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. While living in the Canary Islands, Joaquín took up scuba diving, which he loves for its combination of tranquil settings and technical challenges. “It's peaceful, and you feel like you're floating, and you have no gravity.” When he can’t dive, Joaquín likes to swim. He also enjoys visiting family and friends in his hometown Teruel and giving science toys to his 4-year-old nephew, and – carefully – showing him the toy microscope.