A mouse interneuron co-cultured with human excitatory neurons

 

Toward One Brain

In Global Health, the “One Health” approach is used to describe a multidisciplinary and highly collaborative approach to treat patients on a local, national and global scale. We believe that neuroscience would benefit from a “One Brain” approach in which research is carried out in a transdisciplinary manner, involving biologists, engineers, educators, and governmental leaders:

1) At the micro level: The brain is a community of cells, both neuronal and non-neuronal, that are in constant communication with each other. We believe that to understand brain development, we should focus on the interactions between cell subtypes. Our particular interest is in how the microenvironment instructs and refines neuronal identity, and the fate plasticity of maturing neurons. To this end, we use a combination of molecular, electrophysiological and bioengineering approaches to probe and push the limits of neuronal identity.

2) At the macro level: We are committed to a holistic approach to neuroscience, moving beyond the laboratory. We believe in the importance of science education and making science accessible to everyone in the world. To this end, we are creating technologies to scale experimental neuroscience education around the world through the Internet of Things. We trust that science education can become an important tool of public diplomacy and we are devoted to leading the way in the field of neurodiplomacy.

 

Group news

  • Mo, Jesus, Hunter and Sebastian H to present at the SSPsyGene consortium annual meeting

    Los Angeles, CA
    November 18-19, 2024

  • Mo presented at the IEEE International Conference on Signal Processing, Information, Communication and Systems 2024

    Dhaka, Bangladesh
    November 1, 2024

  • Mo and Samira presented at the NIH Centers of Excellence in Genomic Science (CEGS) annual meeting

    San Diego, CA
    October 28-30, 2024

  • Preprint "Fate plasticity of interneuron specification" is out on Biorxiv

    October 3, 2024

  • Mo presented at Boston Children's Hospital/Harvard Medical School

    Boston, MA
    September 17th, 2024

  • Our group is part of a team awarded a $12.3M grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, together with our colleagues at UC Santa Cruz, UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley

    August 30, 2024

  • Review "Reducing education inequalities through cloud-enabled live-cell biotechnology" was published in Trends in Biotechnology

    August 28, 2024

  • Mo attended the CZI Neuroscience 2024 Meeting

    Monterey, CA
    July 9-12, 2024

  • Article "Internet-enabled lab-on-a-chip technology for education" published in Scientific Reports

    June 22, 2024

  • Article "SIMS: A deep-learning label transfer tool for single-cell RNA sequencing analysis" published in Cell Genomics

    June 12th, 2024

  • Baha Eddine Belmekki visits the lab as an Arab-American Frontiers Fellow from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia

    June 1st, 2024

  • Mo presents "Unraveling neuronal identities and evolution" at the Association for Computing Machinery Research Conference

    Santa Cruz, CA
    May 28th, 2024

  • Mo presented "Programming the Brain" at RIT Croatia

    Dubrovnik, Croatia
    April 23rd, 2024

  • Vladimir gets the "Research Mentoring Internship" fellowship

  • Isabel to intern at Vaxart

    South San Francisco, CA
    Summer, 2024

  • Vladimir to intern at the National Youth Science Academy

    Monongahela National Forest, WV
    Summer 2024

  • Preprint "A feedback-driven IoT microfluidic, electrophysiology, and imaging platform for brain organoid studies" is out on Biorxiv

    March 15, 2024

  • Sebastian H gets the University of California - HSI-DDI Fellowship

    March 7, 2024

  • Samira gets the Graduate Pedagogy Fellowship from the UCSC Teaching and Learning Center

    February 2, 2024

  • Article "Modulation of neuronal activity in cortical organoids with bioelectronic delivery of ions and neurotransmitters" was published in Cell Reports Methods

    January 22, 2024

  • Article "Internet-connected cortical organoids for project-based stem cell and neuroscience education" was published in eNeuro

    November 28th, 2023

  • Jesus and Mo present at the SSPsyGene Consortium Annual Meeting

    November 15, 2023
    Bethesda, MD

  • Mo presented "A scalable approach to enable project-based learning in underserved communities throughout the world" at the 9th Arab-American Frontiers of Science, Engineer and Mathematics Symposium

    Doha, Qatar
    October 23, 2023

  • Mo presented "Multimodal neuronal data: the next frontier in big data in biology"" at the NIH Centers of Excellence in Genomic Science (CEGS) annual meeting

    New York City, NY
    October 10, 2023

  • Mo presented "How to make a Brain" at the University of Costa Rica

    San Jose, Costa Rica
    September 20, 2023

  • Mo taught the workshop "Programming and Reprogramming the Brain" at the University of Costa Rica

    San Jose, Costa Rica
    September 19-21, 2023

  • Mo presented "A data-efficient deep learning tool for scRNA-Seq label transfer in neuroscience" at the Bay Area Chromatin Club

    July 27, 2023

  • Mo presented "How to build a brain?" at the 2023 National Youth Science Camp

    Monongahela National Forest, WV
    July 2, 2023

  • Mo was at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Neurodegeneration Challenge Network Annual Meeting

    San Diego, CA
    June 6-9, 2023

  • Hunter receives Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation

    March 28, 2023

  • Mo presented "Brain organoids as models of neuronal fate plasticity and evolution" at the University of Rhode Island

    Kingston, RI
    February 17th, 2023

  • Article "A Latin American perspective on neurodiplomacy" was published in Frontiers in Medical Technology

    January 13, 2023

  • Jesus presented "Low-code tool for cell type classification from single-cell transcriptomic data and its use in neuroscience" at the Alicante Neuroscience Institute

    Alicante, Spain
    December 20, 2022

  • Mo presented "Remote project-based experimental STEM education enabled through the Internet of Things " at the African Conference on Research in Chemistry Education

    Cairo, Egypt
    December 7-9, 2022

  • Article "Cloud-controlled microscopy enables remote project-based biology education in underserved Latinx communities" was published in Heliyon

    November 15, 2022

  • Julian, Hunter, Pierre and Mo presented at the Society for Neuroscience 51th Annual Meeting

    San Diego, CA

    November 12-16, 2022

  • Mo was at the SACNAS National Diversity In STEM Conference

    San Juan, Puerto Rico

    October 27-29, 2022

  • Mo presented at the NIH Centers of Excellence in Genomic Science (CEGS) annual meeting

    Duke University, Durham, NC

    October 18-20, 2022

  • Mo presented at the US-Africa Frontiers of Science, Engineering, and Medicine symposium by invitation of the US National Academy of Sciences

    Nairobi, Kenya

    October 12-14, 2022

  • Article "IoT cloud laboratory: Internet of Things architecture for cellular biology" was published in Internet of Things

    September 26, 2022

  • Mo presented "Studying fate plasticity using brain organoids" at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine Bridges Meeting

    San Diego, CA

    July 25 , 2022.

  • Article "Tropism of SARS-CoV-2 for human cortical astrocytes" was published in PNAS

    July 16, 2022

  • Article "The emergence of Neurodiplomacy" was published in iScience

    June 17, 2022

  • Eric interned at the University of Missouri

    Columbia, MO

    Summer, 2022

  • Article "The development and evolution of inhibitory neurons in primate cerebrum" was published in Nature

    March 23, 2022

  • Hunter interned at Ionis Pharmaceuticals

    Carlsbad, CA

    Summer, 2022

  • Mo moderated the "Improving science diplomacy interfaces to address global challenges" session of the Science policy paper writing workshop on diplomacy issues.

    Journal of Science Policy & Governance

    March 5, 2022

  • Mo was part of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine Central Nervous System Workshop

    Virtual Workshop

    February 24-25, 2022

  • Preprint "Internet of Things Architecture for Cellular Biology" is out on Biorxiv

    February 10, 2022

  • Julian and Mo present at 1st Central Asia Genomics Symposium

    Tashkent, Uzbekistan
    December 8, 2021

  • The group becomes part of the Global Health Initiative

    UC Santa Cruz
    November 19, 2021

  • Mo presents poster "Fate plasticity of interneuron specification" at the Society for Neuroscience 50th Annual Meeting

    Chicago, IL
    November 9, 2021

  • Mo presents "Programming and reprogramming the cerebral cortex" at the Georgia Gosnell Distinguished Seminar Series of the Rochester Institute of Technology

    Rochester, NY
    October 27, 2021

  • Mo presents "Biology education in public diplomacy" at the 2021 Tsukuba Conference

    Tsukuba, Japan
    September 24th, 2021

Current Location

UCSC Genomics Institute

Santa Cruz, CA