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December 01, 2013
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Date:27TuesdayMay 2025Lecture
Unlocking the Night: Novel Approaches Advancing the Neuroscience of Sleep and Cognition
More information Time 12:30 - 13:30Location Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture HallLecturer Prof. Yuval Nir Organizer Department of Brain SciencesContact Abstract Show full text abstract about In this talk, I will present recent studies in our lab, wher...» In this talk, I will present recent studies in our lab, where new tools are pushing the boundaries of sleep research.In a first line of studies, we are investigating how sleep promotes memory consolidation in humans. To this end, we developed a novel ecological paradigm to study episodic memory without report; upon repeated viewing of special movies ,eye gaze patterns can quantify memory for specific events. Next, we show that deep brain closed-loop intracranial electrical stimulation during human sleep enhances hippocampus-cortex synchrony and memory performance. Finally, we examine how sleep and memory are disrupted in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) representing early Alzheimer’s disease (AD). To this end, we developed a novelmachine learning-based method to non-invasively detect interictal spikes occurring in the medial temporal lobe during sleep. This approach can help identify disruptions in hippocampus-cortex synchrony and memory consolidation during sleep.In the second line of studies, we investigate how reduced locus coeruleus-noradrenaline (LC-NE) activity during sleep mediates sensory disconnection. In rodents, the level of ongoing tonic LC activity during sleep anticipates sound-evoked awakenings, while minimal optogenetic LC activation or silencing increases and decreases such awakenings, respectively. Projection-specific investigation in mice indicates that an early surge of brainstem NE is particularly important for mediating sensory-evoked awakenings. These findings may shift how we view arousal- promoting neuromodulation; rather than acting in a diffuse hormonal-like manner, the LC-NE system may in fact operate through specific projection pathways, in a circuit-like manner. Finally, I will describe a novel method for monitoring gaze direction and pupil size through closed eyes in humans via short-wave infrared (SWIR) imaging in combination with video analysis algorithms. This technology has potential to enable touchless and continuous monitoring of depth of anesthesia, pain, and detection of intraoperative awareness. -
Date:27TuesdayMay 2025Lecture
A Roller Coaster Ride Through Molecular Crowding: From Test Tube to Tissue
More information Time 14:00 - 15:00Location Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture HallLecturer Dr. Debabrata Dey Organizer Department of Chemical and Structural Biology -
Date:27TuesdayMay 2025Lecture
EPS AI discussion: Geospatial AI Foundation Models
More information Time 15:00 - 16:00Location Sussman Family Building for Environmental SciencesLecturer Hendrik Hamann Organizer Department of Earth and Planetary SciencesAbstract Show full text abstract about In recent years, the landscape of artificial intelligence (A...» In recent years, the landscape of artificial intelligence (AI) has been reshaped by the rapid emergence of Foundation Models (FMs). These versatile models have garnered widespread attention for their remarkable ability to transcend the boundaries of traditional, bespoke AI solutions and to generalize to a large set of downstream tasks. In this presentation we will describe the development of geospatial FMs with earth observation and weather data and discuss the initial results of such models when fine-tuned to various applications including flood detection, CO2 monitoring, nature-based carbon sequestration. We will also show how such foundation models can be a new and exciting tool for assisting and accelerating scientific discovery. -
Date:29ThursdayMay 2025Lecture
Ribosomal Dynamics in Hematopoiesis and Viral Infectionced
More information Time 10:00 - 11:00Location Nella and Leon Benoziyo Building for Biological Sciences
Auditorium Rm. 191Lecturer Dr. Daphna Nachmani
(HUJI)Abstract Show full text abstract about Faculty of Science – The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ...» Faculty of Science – The Hebrew University of Jerusalem -
Date:29ThursdayMay 2025Colloquia
Physics Colloquium
More information Time 11:15 - 12:30Title Extra-solar Planets: Historical PerspectiveLocation Physics Weissman AuditoriumLecturer Prof. Tsevi Mazeh Abstract Show full text abstract about Since the groundbreaking discovery of 51 Pegasi b in 1995, a...» Since the groundbreaking discovery of 51 Pegasi b in 1995, a few thousands extra-solar planets have been identified, marking the beginning of a rapidly evolving new field in Astronomy. This talk will trace the history of exoplanet research and explore how these discoveries have reshaped our understanding of planetary formation and opening new frontiers in the study of planetary systems. -
Date:03TuesdayJune 2025Lecture
FTH1–NCOA4 Complex: Structural Basis for the Intracellular Regulation of Ferritin Degradation
More information Time 14:00 - 15:00Location Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture HallLecturer Dr. Gabriel Frank Organizer Department of Chemical and Structural Biology -
Date:03TuesdayJune 2025Lecture
Isolating the Anthropogenic Effect in Soil Spectroscopy and Digital Soil Mapping
More information Time 14:00 - 15:00Location via zoom onlyLecturer Nicolas Francos -
Date:04WednesdayJune 2025Lecture
students seminar series- Azrieli
More information Time 10:30 - 12:30Location Camelia Botnar BuildingContact -
Date:05ThursdayJune 2025Lecture
Vision and AI
More information Time 12:15 - 13:15Title Learning Zero-Shot Materials Recognition using Physics-Based-RenderingLocation Jacob Ziskind Building
Room 1 - 1 חדרLecturer Sagi Eppel
WISOrganizer Department of Computer Science and Applied MathematicsContact Abstract Show full text abstract about Visual recognition of materials and their states is essentia...» Visual recognition of materials and their states is essential for understanding the world, from determining whether food is cooked, metal is rusted, or a chemical reaction has occurred. Collecting data that captures this vast variability is complex due to the scattered and gradual nature of material states. Manually annotating real-world images is constrained by cost and precision, while synthetic data, although accurate and inexpensive, lacks real-world diversity. This work aims to bridge this gap by infusing patterns automatically extracted from real-world images into synthetic data. We show that neural nets trained on this data outperform state-of-the-art zero-shot models like Clip and SAM on material recognition and segmentation tasks.
Reference:
Drehwald, Manuel S., et al. "One-shot recognition of any material anywhere using contrastive learning with physics-based rendering." Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision. 2023.
Eppel, Sagi, et al. "Infusing Synthetic Data with Real-World Patterns for Zero-Shot Material State Segmentation." The Thirty-eight Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems Datasets and Benchmarks Track. 2024
Bio:
Researcher at the Weizmann Institute AI Hub with a Ph.D. in Chemistry and a postdoc in Materials Engineering. Research topics include: solar cells, crystallization, computer vision, self-driving cars, and autonomous laboratories in academia and industry. -
Date:05ThursdayJune 2025Lecture
Geometric Functional Analysis and Probability Seminar
More information Time 13:30 - 14:30Title Cluster-cluster modelLocation Jacob Ziskind Building
Room 155 - חדר 155Lecturer Eviatar Procaccia
TechnionOrganizer Department of MathematicsContact Abstract Show full text abstract about The Cluster-cluster model was defined by Meakin in 1984. Con...» The Cluster-cluster model was defined by Meakin in 1984. Consider a stochastic process on the graph Z^d.
Each x in Z^d starts with a cluster of size 1 with probability p in (0,1] independently.
Each cluster C performs a continuous time SRW with rate |C|^{-\alpha}.
If it attempts to move to a vertex occupied by another cluster, it does not move, and instead the two clusters connect via a new edge.
In all dimensions, we show that if \alpha>= 1, there is no spontaneous creation of an infinite cluster in a finite time a.s.
Focusing on dimension d=1, we show that for \alpha>-2, at time t, the cluster size is of order t^\frac{1}{\alpha + 2}, and for \alpha < -2 we get an infinite cluster in finite time a.s.
Additionally, for \alpha = 0 we show convergence in distribution of the scaling limit.
Joint work with Noam Berger (TUM) and Daniel Sharon (Technion) -
Date:05ThursdayJune 2025Lecture
Stress and mutation dependencies in the tumor microenvironment
More information Time 14:00 - 15:00Location Candiotty AuditoriumLecturer Prof. Ruth Scherz-Shouval Organizer Dwek Institute for Cancer Therapy Research -
Date:05ThursdayJune 2025Lecture
The laying hen makes some noise
More information Time 15:00 - 16:00Location Nella and Leon Benoziyo Building for Biological Sciences
Auditorium Rm.191Lecturer Dr. Dror Sagi
Dept. of Aquaculture, Institute of Animal Science, RehovotAbstract Show full text abstract about Our lab aims to establish the laying hen as a model animal f...» Our lab aims to establish the laying hen as a model animal for studying aging and reproduction.As a vertebrate species, hens serve as a terrific model for these processes: they lay an egg daily, follow a circadian rhythm similar to humans, develop osteoporosis with age, and exhibit menopause-like phenotypes. In the seminar, I will present data linking chrononutrition with improved reproduction and health, introduce metabolic noise as a universal and quantifiable biomarker of aging, and demonstrate how daily egg production enabled us to develop a quantitative model for fertility. We further extended this modeling in collaboration with an IVF clinic, aiming to predict reproductive age in young women and estimate their likelihood of conceiving spontaneously. -
Date:08SundayJune 2025Lecture
The Clore Center for Biological Physics
More information Time 13:15 - 14:30Title Building accurate and functional neural circuits with a handful of design principlesLocation Nella and Leon Benoziyo Physics LibraryLecturer Prof. Elad Schneidman
Lunch at 12:45Contact Abstract Show full text abstract about The map of synaptic connectivity between neurons shapes the ...» The map of synaptic connectivity between neurons shapes the computations that neural circuits carry - making the identification of the design principles of neural “connectomes” crucial for understanding brain development, learning, information processing, and behavior.We present a class of probabilistic generative models for the connectomes of different brain areas in zebrafish, worm, and mouse. Our models accurately replicate a wide range of circuit properties - synapse existence and strength, neuronal in-degree and out-degree, and sub-network motif frequencies - using surprisingly small sets of biological and physical architectural features. We then show that simulated synthetic circuits generated by our models recapitulate the neural activity and computation performed by the real ones. We extend these generative models to study the development of connectomes over time, and show they accurately replicate the “developmental trajectory” of the connectome of C. elegans, revealing a simpler set of functional cell types than commonly assumed, and identifying distinct developmental epochs. We further study structure-function relationships in simulated spiking neural networks and learn a metric that predicts the similarity of networks based on a small set of architectural features. Our findings suggest that connectomes across species follow surprisingly simple design principles and offer a general computational framework for analyzing connectomes, linking their structure to function. FOR THE LATEST UPDATES AND CONTENT ON SOFT MATTER AND BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS AT THE WEIZMANN, VISIT OUR WEBSITE: https://www.biosoftweizmann.com/ -
Date:08SundayJune 2025Academic Events
PhD Thesis Defense Lora Fahdan-Advisor: Prof Oren Schuldiner
More information Time 14:00 - 16:00Title Systematic study of the molecular components mediating axon growth during development and following injuryLocation Wolfson Building for Biological Research
auditoriumContact -
Date:09MondayJune 2025Colloquia
Molecules in Optical Cavities: New Platforms for Molecular Polaritonics and Precision Spectroscopy
More information Time 11:00 - 12:15Location Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture HallLecturer Prof. Marissa Weichman Organizer Department of Molecular Chemistry and Materials ScienceHomepage Contact -
Date:09MondayJune 2025Lecture
Foundations of Computer Science Seminar
More information Time 11:15 - 12:15Title Size Efficient PCPs and Fault-tolerant Routing via HDXLocation Jacob Ziskind Building
Room 1 - 1 חדרLecturer Dor Minzer
MITOrganizer Department of Computer Science and Applied MathematicsContact Abstract Show full text abstract about We will discuss recent PCP constructions based on high-dimen...» We will discuss recent PCP constructions based on high-dimensional expanders that achieve small soundness and quasi-linear size, which are two key properties of PCPs.
To do so we discuss the idea of "derandomized hardness amplification", which is a soundness amplifying procedure that only incurs a mild size blow-up, and show how to achieve it (in the context of PCPs) via high-dimensional expanders.
No special background will be assumed.
Based on joint works with Mitali Bafna, Noam Lifshitz, Nikhil Vyas and Zhiwei Yun -
Date:10TuesdayJune 2025Lecture
EPS AI Discussion seminar: AI architectures for extreme environmental systems
More information Time 11:30 - 12:30Location Sussman Family Building for Environmental Sciences
M. Magaritz seminar roomLecturer Ron Sarafian Abstract Show full text abstract about While AI has achieved remarkable advancements in areas such ...» While AI has achieved remarkable advancements in areas such as image recognition and natural language processing, its application in Earth and environmental sciences is still emerging. Unprecedented data from satellites, remote sensors, and in-situ measurements offers new opportunities to improve physics-based model forecasts of environmental systems with AI and to gain deeper insights. However, extreme systems as weather and climate events, pose distinct challenges for AI, such as limited sampling of rare events, non-trivial data augmentation, errors-in-variables, and complexities of transfer learning across diverse tasks. In this talk, I will explore these challenges and showcase AI architectures designed to address them. I will use specific examples of forecasting dust storms, precipitation extremes, and drought events in the Middle East. -
Date:10TuesdayJune 2025Lecture
Learning from the Circadian Clocks in Multicellular Cyanobacteria
More information Time 12:30 - 14:00Title Spotlight on Science Lecture by Dr. Rinat GorenLocation Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture HallLecturer Dr. Rinat Goren
Spotlight on Science lecture sponsored by the Staff Scientists CouncilContact Abstract Show full text abstract about The circadian clocks in unicellular phototrophic organisms a...» The circadian clocks in unicellular phototrophic organisms are known to display remarkable reliability. In contrast, little is known about circadian clocks in a multicellular setting. Are the clocks in multicellular cyanobacteria coupled and synchronized with each other through cell–cell communication or do they only react to external cues? What is the spatial extent of synchronization? To tackle these and other questions, we studied the dynamics of a circadian clock-controlled gene in undifferentiated and differentiated Anabaena sp. PCC 7120 filaments, a multicellular cyanobacterium in which cells are arranged in a line and coupled by protein channels. We followed its expression at the level of individual cells in real time as the filaments grew, and the synchronization and spatial coherence along filaments was quantitatively measured. Our study sheds light on the importance of circadian clocks in the regulation of a variety of essential processes in cyanobacteria. -
Date:10TuesdayJune 2025Lecture
Targeting RNA complexes with small molecules: to bind or to degrade?
More information Time 14:00 - 15:00Location Gerhard M.J. Schmidt Lecture HallLecturer Dr. Raphael I. Benhamou Organizer Department of Chemical and Structural Biology -
Date:10TuesdayJune 2025Lecture
Evolution of the pathogenic mold Aspergillus fumigatus on voriconazole identifies novel resistance genes
More information Time 14:00 - 15:00Location Candiotty
AuditoriumLecturer Dr. Mariana Handelman Organizer Dwek Institute for Cancer Therapy Research