Deb Joye, PhD

they/she | Neuroscientist & science communicator | Senior Account Supervisor @stellatecomms | I just want to tell science stories and shake things up 🧠🌈

[Alison Preston @AliPrestonPhD]

Really enjoyed giving yesterday's #TAMeG2026 keynote & joining @morganbarense, @EFRiskoUW & Ike Okafor on the mentorship panel. Things that have stuck with me:
🪟 Mentorship needs transparency
📣 It needs advocacy beyond advice
🔁 Mentors learn from mentees too

[Alison Preston @AliPrestonPhD]

Children get better at reasoning from memory as they grow up. But is it the same brain process getting stronger, or something more fundamental changing?

In our new paper, we use fMRI and computational modeling to test that question directly 🧵

[Alison Preston @AliPrestonPhD]

What comes to mind when you hear "math playground"? Because at a @simonsfdn gathering for @FuseboxFestival this past weekend, I saw a literal one (more in thread 🛝)

[Stellate Communications @stellatecomms]

Congrats to @RhienEHare for being one of the top women in PR 🎉

Every year, @PRNews recognizes an elite group of women shaping the future of comms. Rhien is a 2026 Rising Star awardee — a category for those making a mark early in their careers.

Watch out world! 🧪🌍🔭

[Adib @adibvafa]

We taught a DNA model to learn its own tokenization.

It learned the genetic code with no supervision.

And outperforms Evo 2's architecture with 3x faster inference.

Great work with Arnav (@arnavshah0), Victor (@victor_ljz), Parsa (@Radii2323), Brandon (@fluorane), Sukjun (@sukjun_hwang), Bo Wang (@BoWang87), Patrick Hsu (@pdhsu), Hani Goodarzi (@genophoria) and Albert Gu (@_albertgu) 🔥

[Arc Institute @arcinstitute]

Most genomic AI models use fixed rules to process DNA into chunks, imposing arbitrary boundaries on a sequence with its own biological structure.

@arnavshah0, @victor_ljz, and team developed dnaHNet, a tokenizer-free foundation model that learns its own segmentation from scratch, supervised by @_albertgu, @genophoria, and @BoWang87.

[Alison Preston @AliPrestonPhD]

The Preston Lab has a new doctor in the house! 🎉 Congratulations to Dr. Owen Friend, who defended his dissertation today. Seven studies in four years, all on how children remember when things happen. His committee called it the best defense talk they'd ever seen. We're so proud!

[Juan Benet @juanbenet]

Excited to launch a new podcast dedicated to conversations on the future of neurotech, computing, intelligence, and more.

First guest: @maxhodak_ founder & CEO of @ScienceCorp_, which is building PRIMA, a retinal prosthetic that’s restoring meaningful vision for patients with blindness caused by age-related macular degeneration.

Science is also developing a biohybrid brain implant that grows living neurons directly onto a silicon chip, then interfaces that system with the cortex. The possibility space here is vast and new. Imagine growing new areas of the brain.

Sections
00:00 What counts as neurotech?
01:45 History of brain-computer interfaces and the smartphone dividend
07:25 PRIMA - How Science is restoring vision in blind patients
10:10 Why stimulating bipolar cells works when the optic nerve doesn't
30:30 Are we bottlenecked by biology or engineering?
32:40 Expanding the brain's bandwidth beyond 10 bits per second
37:00 Can we add new areas to the brain?
37:46 Biohybrid BCIs: neurons growing on a chip
39:20 What could neural augmentation look like?
01:13:20 How Science drives Fast R&D
01:44:00 How founders learn and level up

This is the kind of discussion I’m excited to explore on this podcast. Enjoy!

Full Episode 1 here and in links below.

[Erin Dunn, ScD, MPH @ErinDunnScD]

The award honors Naomi Breslau & Jane Murphy, two women who were small in stature (like me!) but absolutely enormous in presence, impact, and generosity to the scientists they trained.

A reminder that you don't have to be big to be a giant.

More: https://t.co/J8Xm3cAFOu

[Erin Dunn, ScD, MPH @ErinDunnScD]

Feeling a bit verklempt to be honored with the 2026 Breslau/Murphy Award from @APPAassociation. It’s hard to overstate how much an award like this means to me.

I love science, and training the next generation of scientists isn’t part of the job, it IS the job.

[Stellate Communications @stellatecomms]

We’re excited to welcome Maria Kalambokidis, PhD, to Stellate as an Account Coordinator ✨

Maria is an evolutionary biologist with expertise in academic research, STEM engagement, and science writing. We’re thrilled to have her on the team 💜

Learn more: https://t.co/894Cz78Z0U

[Sean Escola @SeanEscola]

PL Neuro is officially live! https://t.co/JJ5BqOGzCR

We exist to break bottlenecks, accelerate progress in neurotech & NeuroAI, and to invest in innovations that benefit humanity.

This project of @protocollabs will focus on:
1. Neural augmentation
2. Biologically-inspired intelligence
3. Whole brain emulation

[Alison Preston @AliPrestonPhD]

We’re hiring a full-time Research Coordinator in the Preston Lab at UT Austin (start May/June 2026).

Work on behavioral + fMRI studies of how memory & decision-making develop from childhood to adulthood.

Learn more & apply: https://t.co/x2XuAKMt5P

Please repost!

[Nancy Padilla Coreano @DrNancyPadilla]

My lab is hiring a technician at @UFNeuroscience! 🧠🐭 We use in vivo ephys, optogenetics & machine learning to study how the brain controls social behavior in mice.

Looking for rodent research & mentorship experience — please repost & share!

Apply here: https://t.co/GUPVP4Qt5g

[Stellate Communications @stellatecomms]

Not every website starts from the same place... & not every budget does either ✨

We offer 3 web packages built for different stages, timelines & goals. Fully bespoke custom builds, to a launched site in a month — see how they compare 👇🏽

Get a quote: https://t.co/3EDIx8WFx4

[Kanaka Rajan @KanakaRajanPhD]

📍 #Cosyne26 bound?

Thrilled to have graduate students @annhuang42 and @sonjajohnsonyu representing the Rajan Lab this year. Shout out to co-first authors @tweetsatpreet and @neurostrow

Catch their sessions to learn about our newest work 🧠🤖

[Arc Institute @arcinstitute]

Metabolite supplementation could offer a simple, low-cost way to improve CAR T cell therapy without any changes to the cells themselves. A clinical trial in r/r DLBCL is now enrolling (NCT06610344).

Paper: https://t.co/qaquMb7hcC...
Announcement: https://t.co/Tk2AtOluCD

[Arc Institute @arcinstitute]

To learn more about how this study fits into the broader scientific vision of the Levy Lab, read a Q&A with Innovation Investigator @MaayanLevyPhD: https://t.co/3r6IL7iW3s

[Arc Institute @arcinstitute]

CAR T cell therapy has shown strong results against certain cancers, but metabolic exhaustion limits its effectiveness over time.

In @CellCellPress, the @MaayanLevyPhD & @ChristophThaiss labs report that a common supplement can fuel CAR T cells to fight cancer more effectively.

[Eric Topol @EricTopol]

Gut microbes signal the brain influencing age-associated memory and cognitive function in the experimental model @arcinstitute @Nature
https://t.co/elSw3RXbI9