Author Archives: anneurai

The Covid-19 pandemic has propelled the scientific community into a world devoid of in-person conferences. Traditional ‘legacy’ conferences, which have long been the mainstay of academic networking and crucial for catching the latest science, have been largely replaced with virtual events. Moving conferences online is pandemic-proof, and brings myriad other advantages: reduced cost and travel-relatedContinue reading “Hybrid meetings and distributed local meetups: the good, the bad and the ugly”

I’m a sucker for end-of-year reflections, and this year brought no shortage of memorable events, unanticipated challenges and new life chapters. So here goes: my year in review, in pseudorandom order of my associative memory. Good things Survived a global pandemic Kept a small, embodied biological neural network alive, fed and mostly happy. Motor controlContinue reading “2021 in review”

Over the years, I’ve accumulated thousands of notes and a personalized GTD system (with tags and notebooks) in Evernote. I use my own flavor of the Zen to Done method, where I capture pretty much everything (from recipes to articles to read, and from project notes to grant deadlines). I’ve come to heavily rely onContinue reading “Note-taking 101: from Evernote to Obsidian”

Writing the acknowledgment section of my PhD thesis felt like a reward at the end of a long journey: taking the time to highlight everyone who contributed, and appreciating the importance of humanity in science. While there is no such thing as a postdoc thesis, it feels just as significant to wrap up the lastContinue reading “Post-postdoc acknowledgments and sentiments”

A long-ish Twitter thread on the dangers of conflating credit and responsibility assignment in scientific authorship.

I’m a long-term fan of inventor Ellen McHenry’s brain hat: print out a simple template, cut and fold, and wear neuroanatomy on your head! Ideal for those who are not as brave as Nancy Kanwisher. The photos below show me, with the brain hat I made during my studies at ENS Paris. I’ve asked studentsContinue reading “Brain hats”

Since Tweets tend to get lost/unfindable, I’m putting the links for self-organized NMA material study groups here. I’d be happy to hear back (comment on this post) if you’ve found a pod. How are your experiences going through the materials? As there is overwhelming interest in a slower version of #NeuromatchAcademy, see here: the slowContinue reading “NeuroMatchAcademy self-organized slow pods”

How would you generate a sequence of random numbers, if you didn’t have a computer or calculator? Each time you typ rng default or random.randint, numbers get drawn from precise observations of some natural process or special algorithms to produce sequences of numbers with certain properties of randomness. But what if your laptop died, yourContinue reading “Being the RNG”

The last few weeks in the US have been a political and emotional tornado. As protests spread around the country and beyond, I compulsively read the news, went to a local protest and watched Ava DuVernay’s chilling documentary 13th. I also thought a lot about the different ways in which societal and systemic racism manifestsContinue reading “#ShutDownSTEM; fighting racism in academia”

Update [19-11-2021]: see the new Green Neuroscience page for more writings, recorded talks, and slide decks on this topic. I’m no longer updating this blog, but the information is still highly relevant. Note [December 2020]: this blogpost led to an SfN petition, and then to an opinion paper that lays out in more detail whatContinue reading “Climate action for (neuro)scientists: a concrete guide”