Lately, I have joined to a prominent team of AI solutions for e-commerce. The team is focused on fostering a system that makes digital environment aligned with human cognition. It is fun to do applied neuroscience research. This is the very first step, read my piece:
medium.com/@elnaz.karam...
She wrote what I felt and heard a lot myself… what a great respond you wrote for her Reza…
Universities are supposed to be a censers of learning and hope, not targets.
Striking them, whatever the justification, erodes norms that protect science, knowledge, civilization, and future of the next generation.
Academics, don’t let that become normal…
#SharifUniversity
#academia
#war
Philosophy of Science Group
Electrical Engineering Department
I think this is a part of the civil engineering department.
Last night, US/Israeli strikes bombed Sharif University, my alma mater, heavily damaging the IT Center, Philosophy of Science building, EE, and more. Trump spoke of sending Iran "back to the Stone Age." That is the goal of this war. Scientists worldwide should speak up against these atrocities.
Except that my family, called for a 10min check-in after days, and spent seconds of it asking me if the explosion that rattled them was where I used to work as an RA…
4) You PIs know that it’s erasing years of PhD dissertation records. I see the loss of a #Neurophotonics lab. They were pioneering label-free optical sensing and real-time neurovascular coupling maps; tools critical for understanding stroke and neurodegeneration.
I really don’t know what to say…
3) The loss of this facility is a direct blow to the efforts in mapping the connectome and neurovascular health.
The "dual-use" justification used to target academic institutions? Nope. When we destroy a laser lab meant for medical diagnostics, we aren't just hitting a "target".
2) with labs filled with microscopes, voltage-sensitive dyes, and students dedicated to advancing our understanding of the human brain.This was a rare hub for integrated biophotonics.They were building the very tools we use to understand the brain: ISOI, LSCI, and all-optical neuro-modulation suites
1) This is the Laser and Plasma Research Institute at Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, following recent airstrikes.
As a neuroscientist, it’s gut-wrenching to see. This facility was pioneering optical methods to visualize neural activity in real-time.
Said purely academic reseache center,
Rubble and ruins -- Iran Pasteur Institute in Tehran, bombed by US-Isreal
Rubble and ruins -- Iran Pasteur Institute in Tehran, bombed by US-Isreal
Rubble and ruins -- Iran Pasteur Institute in Tehran, bombed by US-Isreal
Rubble and ruins -- Iran Pasteur Institute in Tehran, bombed by US-Isreal
Pasteur Institute of Iran, founded in 1920 now destroyed by Israel-US bombing😞
It played a pivotal role in developing vaccines & public health services, for over a century, now gone😞
A few days ago a pharmaceutical plant was bombed, accused of making anesthetic fentanyl
#War
#PasteurInstituteIran
What if heat and cold weren’t just experiences but signals?
Wearables are turning thermal exposure into something we can actually observe:
how the body reacts, and how it recovers.
Short piece on this idea:
medium.com/@elnaz.karam...
This is me now. My former students, my colleagues, my mentees… and I can’t know if they are fine…
#Iran
#science community, if you speak about #open_science remember that things are much harder than ever in Iran for researchers. This is what counts as democratizing science...
bsky.app/profile/elna...
And let’s read the results. The communication necessity is what makes the most sense to me, exactly related to what we talk about. I think PIs not only should learn it, but also actively teach it to their trainees on a basic routine
I didn’t pose any question 😅 And I opposed that it’s unlikely to happen.
I am more skeptical of your view of “hype-driven” , “power” and “influence”
Isn’t it the other way round? Scientists will have an opportunity to lower the hype a bit. No?
And with all due respect, why hype-driven? I moved from academia to startup. The fund issue is real. No fund means you have to sell to survive. Public fund means you get a bit of security to do actual applied research. And of course a great help to economy and society with creating more real jobs.
This was filled by neuroscientists! Mostly early graduates.This means current academic neuroscience has some severe weak points.This is actually a good thing.Research funds shouldn’t be exclusive to academia.It moves the trend better! Innovation is not always power and startups are opposite of power
#Science-community, please read this and try to support your colleagues
#Iran
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
We're already in the phase that each of us (Iranians) by now know someone killed/injured in our circle of friends/family. And this is despite the continued internet blackout, when millions haven't still managed to hear from their family/friends since Thursday, January 8th. This tells a lot ... 😥😥
It’s becoming almost a year that I started looking for a job. Yes, I’ll never forgive my former employer for what he did to me.
But what was harder is the prejudice and discriminationI face here everyday to get my life in back in order. I was thinking of moving back home. Now where is home?
#iran
⚠️ New paper alert and what a way to end 2025! 🎉
Happy to share our story “Sleep-dependent infraslow rhythms are evolutionarily conserved across reptiles and mammals.” published today in Nature Neuroscience.
Sleeping dragons 🦎 and functional ultrasound!
Read the full paper here: rdcu.be/eWJHb 1/8
2. Every mistake we make, has an effect on others. It might change someone’s life and finding their way back might cost them too much, even with a simple paper rejection. It’s important to know that and I admire @kordinglab.bsky.social for knowing/publicly owning it. Hope for more of this from all
1. My take away from this is
A good scientist and a professor should have accountability: Konrad says sorry! Doesn’t say we all make mistakes but the paper found its way anyways… he took the responsibility and apologized. Something that academics should learn.
New post: The Electric Motor and the Drill
LLM chat bots are like electric motors: can do anything, bad at everything. The problem is UI/UX. AI should be more like power tools. I built a science planner around this philosophy. 10,000 scientists use it now. open.substack.com/pub/kording/...
☝️
I have never registered for sfn ever and I have been receiving emails trying to sell me a booth! One email and three follow ups: Elnaz, did you give my proposition a thought?? :/
6. Recognizing that reality isn’t anti-science; it’s acknowledging privilege and accountability.
If my uncle asks: why I had to make my small business with blood sweat instead of a seed money w/o expectation of return w interest and scientists already have it and feel being under attack,I will be 🤐
5. When the economy tightens, it’s natural for citizens to expect that money to go first to healthcare, wages, and education.
Scientists can and should diversify how they fund their work — through philanthropy, industry, or private partnerships — the same way others invest in their own careers.
4. Many early scientists were self-funded, or backed by philanthropic patrons and industry labs. Public funding made science more stable and accessible — and that’s a good thing.
But it also created a system very few professions enjoy: job security, pensions, and recurring public grants.
3. These go back to mid-20th-century discoveries, made during the golden age of public expansion, not timeless proof that every curiosity changes the world.
Most early universities were built by private donors or religious endowment, long before governments began funding research.