Affiliation: UCSD

Bio: I’m a postdoctoral fellow in Loren Looger’s lab at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). I received my undergraduate degree (BSc. Biotechnology) from Manipal University and my PhD in neuroscience from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS-TIFR) in Bangalore, India. For my PhD, I focused on understanding the physiology of Purkinje neurons in the cerebellum of larval zebrafish in Vatsala Thirumalai’s lab. For my postdoctoral research, I decided to dramatically change my research focus to understand how life is adapting to climate change. More specifically, I study coleoid cephalopods (i.e. squids, octopuses and cuttlefish) and how their physiology might allow them to adapt favourably to rapidly changing environments, work that I began as a 2024 Kavli/Grass Fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratories in Woods Hole. Besides research, I have been an active advocate for positive systemic change in academia and publishing, with my most significant contributions being various projects I undertook during my tenure as an eLife Community Ambassador and subsequently a member of eLife’s Early Career Advisory Group (ECAG).

Session Chair

Affiliation: Scripps Institution of Oceanography of UC San Diego

Bio: Amro Hamdoun is Professor and Associate Director of the Center of Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography of UC San Diego. He also serves as co-director of the Scripps Center for Oceans and Human Health and co-Leader of the Allen Institute for Neurobiology in Changing Environments at UCSD His research focuses on the defense mechanisms of embryos, and the biology of the accumulation and elimination of chemicals in cells. Hamdoun and his laboratory are applying advanced biochemical and microscopic technologies to understand how chemicals can influence the health of early life stages of human and animal development. Their work led to discovery of ubiquitous environmental toxicants that interact with the major human drug transporter ABCB1 (aka P-glycoprotein) and potentially interfere with its function. The lab has also pioneered the use of genetics and automation methods to generate new marine animal models.

Talk Title:Visualization and manipulation of the sea urchin nervous system.

Affiliation: Catalyst Neuro

Bio: Benjamin Dichter, PhD, is the founder of CatalystNeuro, a consulting and software development company specializing in neurophysiology data standardization and analysis. His work focuses on developing and implementing the Neurodata Without Borders (NWB) data standard and the DANDI Archive, enabling efficient data sharing and collaboration in neuroscience. Through CatalystNeuro, Ben leads initiatives to create and maintain open-source software tools that facilitate neurophysiology research and data analysis.

Talk Title: Open Neurophysiology with NWB and DANDI

Affiliation: University of Texas at Austin

Bio: Magna cum Laude in Biology. Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia PhD in Neurobiology and Behavior. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY USA Rubicon Fellow, University of Groningen, The Netherlands Postdoctoral Fellow, National Evolutionary Synthesis (NESCent) – Duke University, Durham, NC USA Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow, SE Climate Science Center, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC USA

Assistant Professor of Biology, Washington University in Saint Louis Associate Professor of Biology,

Washington University in Saint Louis

Associate Professor of Integrative Biology,

Talk Title: The eco-evolutionary dynamics of avian brains

Affiliation: Texas A&M University

Bio: Christine Merlin is a Professor and Presidential Impact Fellow in the Department of Biology at Texas A&M University. Her laboratory has developed the iconic migratory monarch butterfly as an emerging model system to study the molecular and neurogenetic mechanisms underlying circadian and seasonal rhythms, animal migration and magnetoreception.

Talk Title: Neurobiology of monarch butterflies migration in response to overwintering coldness

Affiliation: Oregon Health and Science University

Bio: Dr. Dennis Weingarten is a neuroscientist specializing in synaptic transmission, short-term plasticity, and the neural mechanisms underlying behavior. Currently working in the laboratory of Dr. Skyler Jackman, he investigates how a family of Ca²⁺-sensing presynaptic proteins—called synaptotagmins—shape synaptic short-term plasticity and influence behavior and neurological conditions. As a Kavli-Grass Fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole in 2024, he studied the effects of hypercapnia on lamprey behavior and neurotransmission, aiming to understand how elevated CO₂ levels, a significant consequence of environmental change, impact neural function. He is passionate about exploring these neural adaptations across synaptic, circuit, and systems levels using whole-cell electrophysiology, imaging, and behavioral assays.

Session Chair

Affiliation: University of California San Diego

Bio: Diana Rennison is an assistant professor at the University of California San Diego. She is an evolutionary ecologist using genomic methods to understand that factors the generate and maintain biodiversity.

Talk Title: Genetic architecture of adaptation along climate gradients.

Affiliation: Yale University

Bio: I am a biochemist, cell biologist and neurophysiologist by training with 25 years of experience in biomedical research. My laboratory is working on neurophysiology of mammalian hibernation. Our goal is to reveal cellular and molecular and circuitry mechanisms that induce and support hibernation in mammals. We seek to understand the mechanisms that enable hibernators to survive prolonged periods of hypothermia, water deprivation and starvation. Our research model is thirteen-lined ground squirrel, an obligatory mammalian hibernator. We study hibernation using a wide array of approaches, including single-molecule biophysics, cell biology, chemo- and optogenetics, neurophysiology and animal behavior. By combining cutting-edge molecular tools with a robust animal model, we seek to revolutionize our understanding of the mechanisms underlying hibernation. Our research program tackles fundamental physiological questions from the unique perspective of mammalian hibernators. This work will lay foundation for rational design of pharmacological tools to understand how life in mammals can persist under extreme conditions of prolonged periods of hypothermia, cold exposure, starvation, and dehydration. Our discoveries will allow us to predict whether hibernation can be induced in other mammals, including humans.

Talk Title: Neurophysiological adaptations of hibernation: solutions to enviromental challenges

Affiliation: Brandeis University

Bio: Eve Marder is a University Professor and the Victor and Gwendolyn Beinfield Professor of Neuroscience at Brandeis University. At Brandeis, Marder is also a member of the Volen National Center for Complex Systems. Dr. Marder is known for her pioneering work on small neuronal networks which her team has interrogated via a combination of complementary experimental and theoretical techniques. Marder has received numerous awards for her pioneering work in the field including the National Medal of Science in 2023 and the Kavli Prize in 2016. In 2024, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society, and currently holds memberships in the Institute of Medicine, and National Academy of Sciences.

Keynote Talk Title: Neuromodulation, acclimation, and the effects of temperature on rhythmic motor systems

Affiliation: Max Planck

Bio: Felix is interested in the evolution and resilience of brain function and behavior in the face of environmental change. He received undergraduate degrees in biology and philosophy from the University of Munich, and then worked as a research assitant at Rockefeller University on the molecular basis and evolution of mosquito preference for humans. He obtained his PhD with Hopi Hoekstra at Harvard University, where he investigated the genetic and neural underpinnings of behavioral variation in ecologically distinct deer mice. Since 2021 he has studied the thermal biology, visual cognition and enigmatic brain of the Australian bearded dragon, as a Postdoctoral Fellow with Gilles Laurent at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research.

Talk Title: Exploring thermal constraints on visual cognition in a poikilothermic vertebrate

Affiliation: Marine Biological Laboratory

Bio: Gjenni is a postdoctoral fellow working with Joshua Rosenthal at the Marine Biological Laboratory. She fell in love with A-to-I RNA editing during her PhD studies on non-coding RNAs in human disease at Lund University in Sweden. Now, she studies the molecular basis of high-level RNA recoding in cephalopod brains and its role in the acclimation to changing environments.

Session Chair

Affiliation: Johns Hopkins University

Bio: Grace earned her PhD at the University of Maryland, College Park where she worked with Dr. Catherine Carr to explore bone conduction mechanisms for hearing, vibration sensing, and the evolution of aerial sound detection and localization in tetrapods. Currently, she is working in the labs of Drs. Cynthia Moss and Amanda Lauer on studies that leverage echolocating bats as models for auditory specializations that confer resistance to noise and age-related hearing loss.

Talk Title: Navigating in noise: How brain-to-ear feedback may support resilience in changing acoustic environments

Affiliation: University of Texas at Austin

Bio: Dr. Hans Hofmann is a professor of integrative biology at The University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include the neuromolecular basis of social behavior and its evolution, the neurobiology of social networks, and the genetics of alternative reproductive tactics. He received his MS degree in physiology from the University of Tübingen and his Ph.D. in neurobiology from the University of Leipzig and the Max-Planck Institute in Seewiesen (Germany). As a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, he began taking advantage of the astonishing diversity and plasticity of cichlid fishes to study how the social environment regulates brain and behavior. While a Bauer Genome Fellow at Harvard University, he pioneered behavioral genomics in cichlid fishes and other teleosts to analyze and understand the molecular and neural basis of social behavior and its evolution. He developed many of the functional genomics resources for cichlids and co-led the cichlid genome consortium. Among numerous awards, he received the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship (in Neuroscience) and was awarded the 2008 Frank A. Beach Early Career Award from the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology and the 2019 Exemplar Award of the Center for the Integrative Study of Animal Behavior at Indiana University. He was appointed as a Visiting Professor at the University of Florence (Italy) in 2018. He has also been honored twice with the UT Austin College of Natural Sciences Teaching Award. He served on the editorial boards of several journals and was an Editor for Behavioral Ecology for five years. From 2012 through 2018 he directed UT’s Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics where he led an innovative bioinformatics initiative across the College of Natural Sciences. Between 2013 and 2018, Hofmann was Co-Director of the Neural Systems & Behavior summer course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole (MA). He also served as the founding Director of UT’s Center for Biomedical Research Support for three years. Hofmann currently serves as the Mentor-at-Large for UT Austin Stengl-Wyer Scholars in Biodiversity Research. In his own laboratory, he has trained 15 postdoctoral fellows and 18 doctoral students, most of whom have secured positions at major research universities around the world. He has published more than 150 refereed peer-reviewed papers, many in premier journals such as Nature, Science, PNAS, Cell, Neuron, PLoS Genetics, Endocrinology, and Journal of Neuroscience. In addition to almost 200 invited keynote lectures and department seminars, he has given numerous media interviews and public outreach presentations.

Hofmann Lab website

Talk Title: Resilient Brains: Behavioral and Physiological Homeostasis in Highly Variable Environments

Affiliation: Rockefeller

Bio: James S. Lee is a senior postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Professor Cori Bargmann, where he investigates the adaptations of nematodes to changing environments. During his Ph.D., he contributed to the discovery of several nematode species in California’s Mono Lake—a chemically polluted and arsenic-rich environment that is incompatible with most animal life. One of these nematode species, Tokorhabditis tufae, can be cultured in the lab and survives lethal doses of arsenic (Shih and Lee et al., 2019). Supported by a Kavli-Grass Fellowship and a Whitman Fellowship at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, James’ postdoctoral research uncovered a remarkable live birthing behavior in T. tufae that protects its offspring from arsenic toxicity. He is now collaborating with researchers globally to establish T. tufae and other extremophile nematodes as new model organisms for studying how animals can adapt to and overcome the challenges of environmental contamination.

Talk Title: An unusual, protective behavior in the arsenic-resistant nematode Tokorhabditis tufae

Affiliation: Heidelberg University Hospital

Bio: Prof. Dr. Jan Siemens is a neuroscientist specializing in thermoregulation and sensory neuroscience. A professor at Heidelberg University in Germany and group leader at the Molecular Medicine Partnership Unit (EMBL), he previously held research positions at the Max Delbrück Center in Berlin and UCSF, where he worked with Nobel Laureate Prof. David Julius. His early research contributed to identifying the tip link in auditory hair cells, essential for sound perception. He later shifted focus to thermal sensation, studying TRP ion channels and their role in temperature detection and pain modulation. His work on hypothalamic thermoregulation has provided new insights into how internal thermal sensors regulate body temperature. More recently, his research identified a neuronal plasticity mechanism that helps mice develop heat tolerance over time, shedding light on how organisms adapt to long-term thermal challenges. His studies continue to advance our understanding of the nervous system’s response to environmental changes.

Talk Title: How to cope with the heat? Neuronal plasticity can help.

Affiliation: University of Washington

Bio: Jeff Riffell is an Endowed Professor at the University of Washington Department of Biology and Graduate Program of Neuroscience. His lab’s research focuses on insect sensory neuroscience and how the environment impacts insect pollinators and disease vectors.
Talk Title: Olfactory pollution in the Anthropocene: Impacts of free-radical pollutants in the olfactory processing of insects

Affiliation: Brandeis University

Bio: Dr. Kathleen Jacquerie is a neuroscientist and postdoctoral researcher in Eve Marder’s lab at Brandeis University. Her research focuses on the neuromuscular junction of the crab Cancer borealis, examining how changing ecosystems affect the nervous system. With a background in electrical engineering and electrophysiology, she leverages this system to explore fundamental neuronal principles and address neuroethological challenges. She earned her master’s in electrical engineering from the University of Liège in Belgium, completed a research internship in the lab of Prof. Timothy O’Leary and Prof. Rodolphe Sepulchre at the University of Cambridge, and spent an exchange semester at the Technical University of Munich. Her PhD, funded by F.R.S-FNRS and completed at the University of Liège in the lab of Prof. Guillaume Drion, focused on modeling synaptic plasticity in biophysical neuronal networks. Last year, awarded by a BAEF postdoctoral fellowship, she moved to Boston, trading her computer and codes for a microscope and crabs.

Session Chair

Affiliation: Johns Hopkins University
Bio: I am a new Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at Johns Hopkins University. Our lab is interested in the biology of RNA recoding and its role in generating plasticity to changing environments. We are especially interested in the extensive recoding that has been observed in soft-bodied cephalopods and seek to understand how recoding shapes protein function, and how it is regulated in different cellular and environmental contexts. We use a combination of protein biochemistry, genetics, and -omics analyses to characterize how environmentally-responsive RNA recoding diversifies the function of conserved proteins and cellular processes to support physiological needs. In my postdoctoral research with Samara Reck-Peterson, I used microtubule-based motor proteins as a quantitative model to evaluate how RNA editing might dynamically alter the function of complex cellular machinery. We showed that RNA editing in cephalopods tunes the function of microtubule motor proteins in different tissues and in response to ocean temperature, supporting that recoding is a flexible mechanism that enables context-dependent functions. In addition, my work indicates that edit sites can be leveraged more broadly to guide the characterization of conserved non-cephalopod proteins. Overall, I think exploring cephalopod RNA recoding offers a unique window into how cellular processes can be rapidly adapted in response to ecological challenges. This has relevance to our understanding of adaptation and resilience in response to human-driven challenges like climate change.

Talk Title: RNA recoding in protein diversification and phenotypic plasticity

Affiliation: Columbia University

Bio: Laura received her B.A. in Biochemistry and Biological Basis of Behavior from the University of Pennsylvania and completed a PhD with Paul Taghert at Washington University in St. Louis studying the neuropeptide regulation of circadian behavior in Drosophila. She conducted postdoctoral research with Leslie Vosshall at the Rockefeller University where she switched her studies to the Aedes aegypti mosquito. She started her lab at Columbia University in 2019 where she is a member of the Department of Biological Sciences and an affiliate of the Zuckerman Institute. Research in the Duvall Lab uses genetic, pharmacological, and behavioral approaches to understand how mosquitoes regulate mating, blood feeding, and daily rhythms in their attraction to human hosts. She is the recipient of a 2020 Beckman Young Investigator Award, a 2020 Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Award in Neuroscience, and she is a 2021 Pew Scholar in Biomedical Sciences.

Talk Title: Mating regulation in invasive mosquitoes

Affiliation: Texas State University

Bio: Dr. Huertas is an Associate Professor at the Department of Biology at Texas State University. She is a fish physiologist and endocrinologist with over a decade of research experience focused on the fascinating field of pheromones and chemical communication in fish. Her primary area of study at Texas State University centers on olfactory processes in vertebrates. Specifically, she investigates the impact of environmental stressors, such as nitrogenous pollutants, on the sense of smell. Additionally, her research aims to uncover how external chemical signals—including pheromones, chemical cues, and pathogens—are detected by the olfactory epithelium. She studies how this information is processed in the brain and how it activates the endocrine system to initiate specific physiological processes, such as reproduction and behavior. Dr. Huertas’ lab work focuses on understanding the vertebrate olfactory process, ultimately providing new tools for managing fish populations and addressing issues related to environmental health.

Talk Title: Double-edged sword effects of agricultural-derived nitrite and nitrate in fish chemical senses

Affiliation: Scripps

Bio:Dr. Martín Tresguerres is a marine physiologist specializing in the cellular biology of marine animals and their responses to environmental change. His research integrates molecular techniques, scuba-diving fieldwork, and environmental sensing to explore marine neurobiology in natural habitats. His career spans marine physiology and biomedical research, with pioneering contributions to understanding pH chemosensing, metabolic communication between neurons and astrocytes, and neurobehavioral responses to CO2-induced aquatic acidification. Tresguerres is dedicated to mentoring, outreach, and expanding scientific capacity in Latin America.

Talk Title: The critical importance of external and internal microenvironments on the neurobiology of marine animals

Affiliation: University of California San Diego

Bio: Matt Lovett-Barron obtained a BSc from Queen’s University in Canada in 2009, a PhD in Neurobiology from Columbia University with Attila Losonczy in 2014, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University with Karl Deisseroth. He started at UCSD in 2020, where his lab studies the neurobiology of internal states, social behavior, and behavioral adaptation in fish.

Talk Title: Neural circuits sustaining an odor-driven state in fish

Affiliation: University of Oxford

Bio: Rachel is a Schmidt AI in Science Fellow at the University of Oxford, specializing in the intersection of insect neurobiology, ecotoxicology, and artificial intelligence. She leads the BEEhaviour Lab, developing high-throughput AI-driven methods to diagnose sublethal toxicity in bees and predict species-specific risks. She also leads the MetaBeeAI consortium, an initiative using large language models for systematic review and meta-analysis of pesticide impacts on pollinators. Through interdisciplinary approaches, her work aims to improve ecological risk assessment and inform pollinator conservation strategies.

Session Chair

Affiliation: Harvard University

Bio: Rebecka is a neurobiologist studying how animals have evolved within a microbial world. She leverages her graduate training in ion channel biophysics (UC Davis) and postdoctoral training in animal physiology (Harvard) to characterize how environmental microbiomes sculpt the evolution and function of octopus ‘taste by touch’ chemoreceptors. Through the lens of microbial chemical ecology, Rebecka plans to interrogate how changing environments reshape microbial landscapes and influence how animals across the tree of life engage with their surroundings.

Talk Title: Octopus “taste by touch” chemosensation is mediated by environmental microbiomes

Affiliation: Drexel University

Bio: Sean O’Donnell’s research focuses on nervous system plasticity and evolution, and on thermal physiology. Social arthropods are favored research subjects, currently including army ants, paper wasps, and desert isopods. The O’Donnell lab conducts field work in the Neotropics, exploring how climate and thermal variation across elevations, seasonality gradients, microhabitats and diel cycles challenge animals and shape their thermal physiology and behavioral responses.

Talk Title:Is it hot in here? Attending the thermal needs of social partners

Affiliation: The Kavli Foundation

Bio: Stephanie Albin, Ph.D., is a Senior Program Officer at The Kavli Foundation, where she advances the foundation’s broader neuroscience efforts. She leads the Open Data in Neuroscience theme, including efforts related to the Neurodata Without Borders data standard. Additionally, she supports the Kavli Institutes and other foundation priorities. Before joining the foundation in 2017, Dr. Albin was an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the NSF, working on BRAIN Initiative priorities. She holds a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UC San Francisco and conducted postdoctoral research at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus.

Session Chair

Affiliation: UVA

Bio: The primary goal of research in the Larson Lab is to understand how various environments—cellular, organismal, and ancestral—shape variation in the patterns of degeneration and regeneration in the adult vertebrate brain. Using a combination of behavioral genomics, comparative neuroanatomy, cellular and molecular biology, and electrophysiology, we seek to answer questions such as: How do different spatiotemporal patterns of adult neurogenesis arise within and across individuals, populations, and species? How do these patterns change with environmental fluctuations, both natural and human-induced? Can we leverage the plasticity and diversity of these patterns to better understand the evolution of behavior and aid in conservation efforts? How does the local tissue environment influence neural plasticity and behavior? To address these questions we deploy a variety of strategically selected systems including wild and domesticated songbirds, three-spine stickleback and zebrafish.

Talk Title: Environmental influences on extreme degeneration and regeneration in the avian brain and the impacts on behavior

Affiliation: Illinois State University

Bio: Wolfgang Stein is a neurophysiologist and professor at Illinois State University whose research focuses on the neural mechanisms underlying animal behavior, particularly how the nervous system responds and adapts to environmental challenges. He is best known for his research on the stomatogastric nervous system of crustaceans, where he uses electrophysiology, optical imaging, and computational modeling to investigate pattern generating circuits, their plasticity in response to neuromodulation, and temperature effects on neuronal function. His work provides insights into how climate change might impact nervous system function and animal survival. Stein is also a dedicated mentor and advocate for young scientists, and committed to mentoring students and advancing science education.

Talk Title: A comparative approach to studying mechanisms of neuronal acclimation and adaptation to changing ecosystems