Always interesting to see what previous classes, meetings etc. leave behind, especially in chalk!

Graph on the left seems pretty standard. Are those flowers on the right?

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Although we are still betting huge on neuromeasurology as the technique of the future, Sue has also been working on setting up neuropixels recordings in the lab, and we now have our first recordings!

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Our new year’s resolution is to update the website more frequently, so mid-February seems like the perfect time to get started on that!

Here’s some old photos of lab equipment, events, happenings, and other fun stuff!

More updates soon!

Couldn’t agree more!

Sue and Riley, outdoor journal club (with cake!) during covid times….

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There’s a certain random poetry in un-erased whiteboards.

I (Andrew) have long enjoyed admiring and puzzling over the remnants of others’ brainstorming and scheming that linger in conference rooms, classrooms, and other natural marker board habitats. To celebrate these serendipitous finds, I’ll post particularly interesting specimens along with my commentary here in a recurring series. We’ll kick off the series with two of my favorites.

Enjoy!  

Location: Life Sciences Building (5th floor hallway), UCLA
Date: Unknown (but I once tried to erase this board to no avail, so I think it’s safe to say it’s been there a while)
Notes: Gotta love a math joke! Is this the work of an undergrad? A bored professor? A random passerby? It’s difficult to ascertain much about the artist, though the fact that this marker board lacks a marker-holding tray suggests a certain level of preparedness and intentionality. The apparent antiquity of this work means the identity of its author is likely lost to time. Yet the message endures. 

Location: Franz Hall, Garcia room, UCLA
Date: Circa February, 2020
Notes: A most compelling piece that rewards attempts to reconstruct its genesis. Is this an experiment someone was planning? An attempt to explore predator-prey interactions in some alien, tube-based environment? Are the crude, animal-like figures meant to represent actual living creatures, or does this depict a naturalistic scene in someone’s imagined parallel universe? Perhaps those figures aren’t meant to be animals at all; perhaps this is a pictorial metaphor for some molecular pathway? The artist leaves few clues to guide interpretation. As with the best work, this piece invites more questions than it answers.

Exciting news! Linh Vo, one of our intrepid undergraduate researchers, just published a book on the healthcare system in the United States! This is a huge achievement for anyone, and is all the more impressive for someone also balancing course work and research. Congrats Linh!

You can check out the book on amazon and learn more about it on Linh’s website.