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Rory Byrne

@rory.bio
538 followers 1.4K following 74 posts

Neuroscience PhD student, Cambridge UK. Confused but excited. "Everything around me was somebody's lifework" 👋 rory.bio 🔧 compmotifs.com

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Reposted by Rory Byrne
Marcus Ghosh @marcusghosh.bsky.social · 22/12/2025
Toy models, just in time for Christmas! Excited to share my first article for @thetransmitter.bsky.social #neuroskyence
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 10/11/2025
I built a link-sharing discussion website for (meta)science. talk.amacrin.com Scientific discourse here and elsewhere is a bit fragmented, so I made a space for centralised, casual discussion. You can log in with Bsky. Still in testing mode. I'll move it to a new domain once I find a good name.
talk.amacrin.com
Science Talk
A forum for discussing metascience, tools, and scientific ideas. Share essays, ask questions, and connect with researchers.
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 21/09/2025
Answer: because seniors know the language of software architecture. This enriches their LLM prompting significantly. If you want to successfully use AI for coding, learn some software architecture!
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 04/09/2025
Proud to have been a part of this, a great example of distributed async science! Huge thanks to @marcusghosh.bsky.social, @neuralreckoning.bsky.social, @tfiers.bsky.social, @krhab.bsky.social and others for putting in the bulk effort 🙌
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 01/09/2025
A great piece from @ersatzben.bsky.social on the importance of bold, aesthetic, mission-oriented directions in publicly funded research. betterscienceproject.substack.com/p/the-counte...
betterscienceproject.substack.com
The Counter-Reformation of science: how to make magnificence democratic
British research has perfected discipline and outsourced magnificence. The fix is to practise demonstration statecraft – visible proofs of capacity that pair theatre with delivery.
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 25/07/2025
open.substack.com/pub/learning...
open.substack.com
Backpropagation is older than you think
AI Histories #6: Backprop begins in the Second World War, not with Werbos or Rumelhart
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Reposted by Rory Byrne
Marcus Ghosh @marcusghosh.bsky.social · 25/07/2025
How can we best use AI in science? Myself and 9 other research fellows from @imperial-ix.bsky.social use AI methods in domains from plant biology (🌱) to neuroscience (🧠) and particle physics (🎇). Together we suggest 10 simple rules @plos.org 🧵 doi.org/10.1371/jour...
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 25/07/2025
Both can safely go back to their home country. If (eg) an Indian immigrant doesn’t intend to integrate (continues speaking native language etc), are they then an expat?
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 24/07/2025
What makes you think immigrants don’t have access to their home country?
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Reposted by Rory Byrne
Dan Goodman @neural-reckoning.org · 24/07/2025
New preprint for #neuromorphic and #SpikingNeuralNetwork folk (with @pengfei-sun.bsky.social). arxiv.org/abs/2507.16043 Surrogate gradients are popular for training SNNs, but some worry whether they really learn complex temporal spike codes. TLDR: we tested this, and yes they can! 🧵👇 🤖🧠🧪
arxiv.org
Beyond Rate Coding: Surrogate Gradients Enable Spike Timing Learning in Spiking Neural Networks
We investigate the extent to which Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) trained with Surrogate Gradient Descent (Surrogate GD), with and without delay learning, can learn from precise spike timing beyond fi...
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 05/05/2025
I think we already explain societal impact, just retroactively: pre-PhD work justifies PhD funding, PhD work justifies postdoc funding, etc. We explain past contributions to secure future funds. I don’t think concurrent justification is reasonable, and might even be detrimental.
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Reposted by Rory Byrne
Institute for Research Software @softwaresaved.bsky.social · 28/04/2025
🟢 Applications are now open for two SSI Fellows' events: Niko Sirmpilatze's "Animals in Motion" and Alessandro Felder's "Big Imaging Data". These events will take place during the NIU Open Software Week running between Monday 11 and Friday 15 August in London. www.software.ac.uk/news/ssi-fel...
NIU Open Software Week
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Reposted by Rory Byrne
Dan Goodman @neural-reckoning.org · 24/04/2025
How do babies and blind people learn to localise sound without labelled data? We propose that innate mechanisms can provide coarse-grained error signals to boostrap learning. New preprint from @yang-chu.bsky.social. 🤖🧠🧪 arxiv.org/abs/2001.10605
arxiv.org
Learning spatial hearing via innate mechanisms
The acoustic cues used by humans and other animals to localise sounds are subtle, and change during and after development. This means that we need to constantly relearn or recalibrate the auditory spa...
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 22/04/2025
Come build tools for science with us in London! Food, cool people, great speakers (on both the science and toolmaking sides). #neuroskyence #openscience #desci #openchem #bioinformatics #opensource #foss
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 15/03/2025
This is great! But how does it work tech wise? It says powered by the python SDK. I don’t know much about the AT protocol (yet).
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Reposted by Rory Byrne
Marcus Ghosh @marcusghosh.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
How can we explore the space of computational models in #neuroscience 🧠? Picture a mouse navigating an environment with light and dark areas. 🧵1/10
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 12/03/2025
If you’re in SF, come build tools-for-science with us later this month! 🛠️ #opensource #neuroskyence #openscience #machinelearning #compchem #chemsky
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Reposted by Rory Byrne
Grace Lindsay @neurograce.bsky.social · 07/03/2025
Just getting started @standupforscience.bsky.social
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Reposted by Rory Byrne
The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
Scientific data and independence are at risk: We need to work with community-driven services and university libraries to create new multi-country organizations that are resilient to political interference. By @neuralreckoning.bsky.social #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/policy/scien...
thetransmitter.org
Science must step away from nationally managed infrastructure
Scientific data and independence are at risk. We need to work with community-driven services and university libraries to create new multi-country organizations that are resilient to political…
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 16/02/2025
Yes but in many cases even a txt file of timestamped lines is enough.
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 16/02/2025
#opensource #python #openscience #neuroskyence #machinelearning #neuroai
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 16/02/2025
This is part of @flywhl.dev, an initiative building devtools for science. Join our Discord: discord.gg/kTkF2e69fH We've also made a "Call for Problems" in the workflow of computational science, which helps us decide what to build next: flywhl-ideas.notion.site
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 16/02/2025
Now, you can search your commit history to find good results and the associated code state.
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 16/02/2025
Then when your experiment runs, logis will commit your code for you, with a nice commit message and experiment metadata at the bottom.
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 16/02/2025
Or use the (work-in-progress) implicit API, where logis finds your parameters/metrics in the arguments and return value.
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 16/02/2025
The SDK is similar to Weights & Biases, just add relevant data to your experiment's run.
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 16/02/2025
🔧 Logis - turn your git history into a searchable scientific log. The `@commit` decorator auto-commits your code when your experiment runs - with metadata in the message. Then you can find previous results by querying for commits with (e.g.) metrics.accuracy > 0.9. github.com/flywhl/logis
github.com
GitHub - flywhl/logis: Turn your git commit history into a scientific log
Turn your git commit history into a scientific log - flywhl/logis
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 14/02/2025
I naively assumed that a Nobel Prize was a prerequisite for such behaviour.
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Reposted by Rory Byrne
Hacker News Top Stories @hackernewsbot.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
Two Hard Things (2009) Discussion
martinfowler.com
bliki: Two Hard Things
There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things -- Phil Karlton (bonus variations on the page)
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Reposted by Rory Byrne
PessoaBrain @pessoabrain.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
Who likes categories anyway? I wonder what this means for the concept of "areas"... #neuroscience www.thetransmitter.org/neural-codin...
thetransmitter.org
Most neurons in mouse cortex defy functional categories
The majority of cells in the cerebral cortex are unspecialized, according to an unpublished analysis—and scientists need to take care in naming neurons, the researchers warn.
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 09/01/2025
Also the search sucks. I just can't find nodes I created in the past, so I don't even try anymore.
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 09/01/2025
I use @tana.inc but their development cycle seems excruciatingly slow. They still don't have basic features that I need, like LaTeX formatting and code blocks. I'd love flash cards, but I have little faith they could get it built even if they wanted to...
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 09/01/2025
This is part of @flywhl.dev where we're building simple, declarative software tools for science. Come say hi! Discord: discord.gg/fd37MFZ7RS
discord.gg
Join the Flywheel Discord Server!
Check out the Flywheel community on Discord - hang out with 56 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 09/01/2025
👩‍💻 Want to try it? `uv add cyantic` `pip install cyantic` (renamed from 'cast' 🤫)
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 09/01/2025
There is an API for building custom @hooks - they're just functions.
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 09/01/2025
You can also pre-process the raw data using @hooks. The @env:MY_VARIABLE hook loads data from an environment variable. The @value:path.to.val hook references a value in the raw input data. The @import:foo.bar dynamically imports a Python object.
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 09/01/2025
The idea is simple: write an object's Blueprint once, then whenever you need that object in your @pydantic.dev models, just pass in the parameters. In #machinelearning and #neuroai, we build a lot of Tensors from various parameterisations...
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 09/01/2025
🔧 Cyantic v0.3.0 - a little library I wrote that builds complex Python objects (like Tensors) from simple blueprints using @pydantic.dev. (The name comes from cyanotype photography, i.e. the "blueprint") #opensource #python #openscience github.com/flywhl/cyantic
github.com
GitHub - flywhl/cyantic: Build complex types from simple blueprints via Pydantic
Build complex types from simple blueprints via Pydantic - flywhl/cyantic
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 08/01/2025
⚠️ Moved to github.com/flywhl/cyantic
github.com
GitHub - flywhl/cyantic: Parameter-driven instantiation for Pydantic types
Parameter-driven instantiation for Pydantic types. Contribute to flywhl/cyantic development by creating an account on GitHub.
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 08/01/2025
Inspired by Fig. 5 from this study by @sarahmuldoon.bsky.social and @danisbassett.bsky.social. www.nature.com/articles/sre...
nature.com
Small-World Propensity and Weighted Brain Networks - Scientific Reports
Scientific Reports - Small-World Propensity and Weighted Brain Networks
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 08/01/2025
Supports Dale's Law: inhibitory neurons (blue columns) have local within-module connections only.
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 08/01/2025
🔧 Re-sharing an old tool: a recursive function to generate hierarchical, modular, Dalean connectivity matrices in PyTorch. Modules are locally dense, with increasingly sparse connections to more distal modules. #neuroai #neuroskyence gist.github.com/rorybyrne/dd...
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 06/01/2025
I see the talks from Montreal AI and Neuroscience (MAIN) 2024 are now online: www.youtube.com/@MAINConfere... #neuroai #neuroskyence
youtube.com
MAIN Conference
Montreal AI and Neuroscience (MAIN) is an international conference organized by the UNIQUE Centre in collaboration with the Centre de Recherches Mathématiques (CRM) at the University of Montreal since...
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 03/01/2025
Though not for listening and speaking simultaneously - that’s an interesting idea.
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 03/01/2025
Superwhisper and Wispr Flow are two that I know of. Tana also has a voice recording feature (tana.inc), along with most other note taking apps I’m sure.
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 30/12/2024
Dimension errors are the "missing semi-colon" of scientific code. They cause an inordinate amount of pain, but can be solved trivially with post-processing of code.
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 30/12/2024
"Scientific code is too intricate, and requires human attention." A huge amount of variance in scientific code is self-imposed noise. How many bugs boil down to getting the dimensions of a matrix wrong? Code generation means that those decisions are made for you.
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 30/12/2024
Forget LLMs, we need more good-old-fashioned code generation. Especially in science. I should be able to define models, analysis, wet-lab protocols, and figures in a declarative language (SQL is declarative), and use opinionated tools to generate the required code. github.com/sqlc-dev/sqlc
github.com
GitHub - sqlc-dev/sqlc: Generate type-safe code from SQL
Generate type-safe code from SQL. Contribute to sqlc-dev/sqlc development by creating an account on GitHub.
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 30/12/2024
Pleasantly surprised to see surrogate gradients used here to optimise over collision detection events (@ 18:28). Relevant for #NeuroAI since step functions can model lots of things in neurons beyond just spiking. www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_Al...
youtube.com
[Kevin Tracy Ph.D. Defense] Differentiable Convex Modeling for Robotic Motion Planning and Control
YouTube video by CMU Robotic Exploration Lab
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Rory Byrne @rory.bio · 29/12/2024
Nice to see journals thinking about software tools, but I wonder if they can offer more to toolmakers than “here is a place to re-write your README in more opaque language”?
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