iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Christopher W. Lynn

Yale Kavli Institute for Neuroscience @kavliatyale.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Congratulations to 1-@shreyasaxena.bsky.social @chriswlynn.bsky.social, @kuanawanda.bsky.social 2-@d-zen.bsky.social, Julien Berro, @sathishkrishna.bsky.social, & 3-@dlevenstein.bsky.social, @tristan-geiller.bsky.social for their Kavli Innovative Teams Awards [4/4] medicine.yale.edu/kavli/news-a...

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Reposted by Christopher W. Lynn

Wu Tsai Institute | Yale University @wutsaiyale.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Applications are now open for WTI's Graduate Certificate in Brains, Minds, and Machines! Open to first-year Yale PhD students. Learn more: wti.yale.edu/initiatives/graduate-certificate 📅 Deadline: April 16, 2026 🚀 Cohort begins Fall 2026 #KnowTogether

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Christopher W. Lynn @chriswlynn.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Sign up to volunteer at the DBIO table at APS! It's a great way to meet other biophysicists (and also get a free t-shirt)

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Reposted by Christopher W. Lynn

APS Division of Biological Physics @aps-dbio.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

Looking for a way to support DBIO (and meet other biophysicists) at the APS Global Physics Summit? Sign up to volunteer at the DBIO membership table. All volunteers get a DBIO t-shirt 👕 Sign up here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

docs.google.com

Volunteer DBIO tablers needed (PLEASE INCLUDE EMAIL AND APS ID)

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Christopher W. Lynn @chriswlynn.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

Correlations in the human brain tell us which regions are functionally "connected". But how many of these correlations do we really need to predict brain activity? Answer: "very few", thus making the human brain highly compressible 🧵👇 www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

pnas.org

Quantifying the compressibility of the human brain | PNAS

In the human brain, the allowed patterns of activity are constrained by the correlations between brain regions. Yet it remains unclear which correl...

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Reposted by Christopher W. Lynn

APS Division of Biological Physics @aps-dbio.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

APS DBIO invites you to submit a striking image representing diverse research in biological physics. The winning images will be advertised at the 2026 Global Physics Summit, and the winners will receive free DBIO t-shirts! Submit here by January 16: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

docs.google.com

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Christopher W. Lynn @chriswlynn.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

Got to meet one of my heroes today. John Hopfield broke down barriers for generations of physicists: “Physics at its best is a point of view for understanding the totality of man and the Universe.”

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Christopher W. Lynn @chriswlynn.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

First paper from the lab! 🤠 Understanding the statistical physics of the brain is hard (in part) because statistical physics is hard. We find a class of max ent models that can be solved EXACTLY in very large neural systems Led by the awesome David Carcamo www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

pnas.org

Statistical physics of large-scale neural activity with loops | PNAS

As experiments advance to record from tens of thousands of neurons, statistical physics provides a framework for understanding how collective activ...

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Reposted by Christopher W. Lynn

Wu Tsai Institute | Yale University @wutsaiyale.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

WTI's Inspiring Speaker Series continues this week with Timothy Lillicrap, “Model-based reinforcement language for reasoning in games and beyond” 10.9.25 | 10 – 11:15a 100 College St, Workshop 1116 🔗 wti.yale.edu/event/2025-10/inspiring-speaker-tim-lillicrap All Yale community members are welcome.

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Reposted by Christopher W. Lynn

Quanta Magazine @quantamagazine.org · 08/10/2025

Adding loops into a genome is a complicated and costly business for a cell. New findings suggest that it may be the reason that ancient life became complex. @philipcball.bsky.social reports: www.quantamagazine.org/loops-of-dna...

quantamagazine.org

Loops of DNA Equipped Ancient Life To Become Complex | Quanta Magazine

New work shows that physical folding of the genome to control genes located far away may have been an early evolutionary development.

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Reposted by Christopher W. Lynn

Jess Cardin @jess-cardin.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

I thought we would never work on gamma oscillations again, but I was wrong 🤷‍♀️ So happy to see this work out in @nature.com! This was a truly epic project spearheaded by @q-perrenoud.bsky.social. Gamma isn't always an oscillation, but it's critical for sensory encoding and perceptual performance 🧠

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Reposted by Christopher W. Lynn

Santa Fe Institute @sfiscience.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

Final week to apply for the 2026 SFI Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships If you're an early-career scholar and passionate about collaborative, transdisciplinary research beyond traditional departments, this is the postdoc fellowship for you. Deadline: Oct 1, 2025 Apply: santafe.edu/sfifellowship

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Reposted by Christopher W. Lynn

APS Division of Biological Physics @aps-dbio.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

Have a striking image of your biophysics research? 🐭🐒🐛🪰🦠Submit it to the DBIO Image Contest! The winning images will be advertised on shirts and other media at the 2026 Global Physics Summit. Submit here:

forms.gle

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Reposted by Christopher W. Lynn

APS Division of Biological Physics @aps-dbio.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

Interested in organizing a session at the 2026 APS Global Physics Summit? It's pain free and a great way to get involved in organizing! We're taking nominations for invited DBIO Symposia through August 24:

docs.google.com

Organize a DBIO Invited Symposium at the 2026 Global Physics Summit

We are seeking nominations for 'Invited Symposium' to enhance the DBIO program for the upcoming Global Physics Summit. An invited symposium consists of five 36-minute invited talks related to a topic ...

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Reposted by Christopher W. Lynn

wbialek.bsky.social @wbialek.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

It was an honor to write this, but also great fun. A chance to look back at the classics, and think about the path forward. #Physics is a beautiful human endeavor. journals.aps.org/prxlife/abst...

journals.aps.org

Emergence of Brains

This review traces how ideas from statistical physics evolved into foundational models of neural computation, shaping modern AI and culminating in the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics.

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Reposted by Christopher W. Lynn

Emily Badger @emmbadger.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

Republicans want states to cut food aid errors. Their bill could do the opposite: www.nytimes.com/2025/07/02/u...

nytimes.com

Republicans Want States to Cut Food Aid Errors. Their Bill Could Do the Opposite.

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Reposted by Christopher W. Lynn

Marcelo Mattar @marcelomattar.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

Thrilled to see our TinyRNN paper in @nature! We show how tiny RNNs predict choices of individual subjects accurately while staying fully interpretable. This approach can transform how we model cognitive processes in both healthy and disordered decisions. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

doi.org

Discovering cognitive strategies with tiny recurrent neural networks - Nature

Modelling biological decision-making with tiny recurrent neural networks enables more accurate predictions of animal choices than classical cognitive models and offers insights into the underlying cog...

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Reposted by Christopher W. Lynn

mleighton.bsky.social @mleighton.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

Interested in coarse-graining, irreversibility, or neural activity in the hippocampus? If so, check out our new preprint exploring how maximizing the irreversibility preserved from microscopic dynamics leads to interpretable coarse-grained descriptions of biological systems!

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Reposted by Christopher W. Lynn

Qiwei Yu @qiweiyu.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

Living systems operate nonequilibrium processes across many scales in space and time. Is there a model-free way to bridge the descriptions at different levels of coarse-graining? Here we find that preserving the evidence of time-reversal symmetry breaking works remarkably well!

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Christopher W. Lynn @chriswlynn.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

Biology consumes energy at the microscale to power functions across all scales: From proteins and cells to entire populations of animals. Led by @qiweiyu.bsky.social‬ and @mleighton.bsky.social‬, we study how coarse-graining can help to bridge this gap 👇🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2506.01909

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Reposted by Christopher W. Lynn

APS Division of Biological Physics @aps-dbio.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

Science is built on public trust, federal funding, and academic freedom. All of these are currently being eroded, but what can we do? Join us for an online panel on "Being a Voice for Science" (June 11, 2-3pm ET). Info and registration: engage.aps.org/dbio/resourc...

engage.aps.org

Resources - Unit - DBIO

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Reposted by Christopher W. Lynn

APS Division of Biological Physics @aps-dbio.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

Apply or nominate for DBIO awards by June 2! Awards include: APS Fellowship Max Delbrück Prize in Biological Physics Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Research in Biological Physics

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Christopher W. Lynn @chriswlynn.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

When constructing models of the world, we aim for good compressions: models that are as accurate as possible with as few details as possible. But which details should we include in a model? An answer lies in the "minimax entropy" principle 👇 arxiv.org/abs/2505.01607

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Christopher W. Lynn @chriswlynn.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

What is the connection between information theory and statistical physics? And how can this connection help us understand the brain? Final installment with the Simplifying Complexity podcast ( @bhcomplexity.bsky.social) podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

podcasts.apple.com

What can physics tell us about the brain? - Part 2

Podcast Episode · Simplifying Complexity · 05/12/2025 · 31m

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Christopher W. Lynn @chriswlynn.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

Statistical physics and information theory may seem daunting, but with a little insight they can become intuitive and are actually deeply related. A fun chat on the Simplifying Complexity podcast (@bhcomplexity.bsky.social) podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

podcasts.apple.com

What can physics tell us about the brain? - Part 1

Podcast Episode · Simplifying Complexity · 04/28/2025 · 35m

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Reposted by Christopher W. Lynn

Simplifying Complexity @bhcomplexity.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

Hear Christopher Lynn from Yale on the latest episode of #SimplifyingComplexity. How can we use the ideas of complexity and network science to better understand the brain? Apple: buff.ly/3VTjG9I Spotify: buff.ly/3WaR9MA 🧪⚛️ #complex #complexity #ComplexSystems #ComplexityScience

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Christopher W. Lynn @chriswlynn.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

Our understanding of neural computation -- both in the brain and artificial networks -- is founded on an assumption: That neurons fire in response to a linear sum of inputs We systematically test this assumption 👇 arxiv.org/abs/2504.08637

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Christopher W. Lynn @chriswlynn.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

The Lynn Group is now on Bluesky! 🕺 We explore how structure and function emerge in complex living systems, particularly the brain. 🧠 We take a statistical physics perspective: seeking to identify the key minimal ingredients that combine to produce collective macroscopic phenomena

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