Nadia Gasmi

Co-founder @LogicIslandsApp, making logic & reasoning games cool again. 🧩 PhD neuroscientist, former neuron & microglia watcher @CCLRI. French, in DC.

[Logic Islands @LogicIslandsApp]

We're dropping a brand new island tomorrow, with a really unique kind of puzzle!

And next week, we're dropping two more islands beyond that (been finalizing those the last few weeks)!

[Logic Islands @LogicIslandsApp]

The social layer of Logic Islands is starting to roll out. Over the weekend we released the first pieces: your daily trio solve can now become a challenge you throw at friends or strangers, you can now keep your own leaderboard of friends and rivals, and you can share verdicts and a player card with your name on it.

[Daniel Rosiak @DanRosiak]

As a mathematician, when i told colleagues over the last 18 months that I was pouring tons of energy and time into building a game, they often responded with some sort of mix of "oh that's cute, but surely it's not as important as math research." I knew they were wrong, and would be increasingly wrong in the future, so I pressed on.

My thesis since about 2024 has been that creating novel environments for "voluntary attempts to overcome unnecessary obstacles" (this is as good a definition of a *game* as one might ask for) will be one of the most important tasks going forward, as ai continues to eliminate more and more obstacles and accordingly strips away more and more of the rewards/understanding/feelings of joy of overcoming obstacles. I dont care how you feel about ai. It's great and it's bad, many things are like this, it's not complicated. If you dont see this dynamic with the removal of obstacles and the effects it's having on people, and the needs that will create, then you do not have eyes.

I took huge risks to make this game, have deliberately winded down research in pure math, have turned down many opportunities (and just closed off the last ones to ensure that the game is all that I focus on pushing as far as i can), and believe that I will be proven right about this bet.

Last week, one math colleague who used to lightly dismiss the game and want to only talk math essentially asked me for a job. Games that bring back understanding and push people in original ways are the future.

[Nadia Gasmi @NadiaGasmi]

First time posting here in years. This is what @DanRosiak and I have been building, and it’s finally out 🎉 I’m really proud of it. Go play!

[Daniel Rosiak @DanRosiak]

It's done. After years of work, Logic Islands: Deduction Game is live on iOS and Android.

In an age of vibe coding and endless promises that you can build something in a weekend so you never have to think again, we did the dumbest possible thing. We took years to make something for actual human beings, to help them think more, not less.

Every puzzle is made by hand and by obsession. I have been designing them for close to 15 years, slowly refining down to the core few hundreds that truly work, testing them on real people of every background and trashing the thousands that didn't make the cut. Each puzzle has solution walk-through explanations that we wrote by hand, on paper and whiteboards, then sat with players to see what landed and what didn't. Sometimes the most elegant (mathematically) solution wasn't the most illuminating, so we adapted. Some single explanations for one puzzle took days to pitch just right.

10 years ago I had notebooks full with ideas and puzzles for this game. I always had a lot going on, and I wasn't an app developer, so it felt too daunting. But I knew deep in my bones that it had to exist, and that I was built to make it, so it was only a matter of time.

After getting hooked on the puzzles herself, my wife @NadiaGasmi convinced me we should build it together and build the version that gets it to the most people possible. 18 months ago, when she quit her job as a neuroscientist at the Cleveland Clinic to go all in with me, I knew it was really happening.

I have always believed that one of the clearest marks of a good game (a game being just "voluntary attempts to overcome unnecessary obstacles") is that it resonates with people of wildly different backgrounds and ages. In early testing, in a given day: lawyers and engineers would ask if they could get their friends an invite, since they were hooked and wanted to share it; my (precocious) 10-year old niece would steal her dad's phone every morning and make him late to work because she wouldn't stop playing; and a few of my math PhD colleagues asked me to write papers about some of the stranger puzzles I was testing. This range of reaction, from such different people, gave us huge boosts and extra courage when we needed it.

It was brutal at times. I had to keep working my 9-5 as well to keep the lights on while we built this, so I learned to love the evenings and weekends hammering away at it. Since I work largely on AI and math by day, it was interesting and refreshing to work on (what I came to see as) the opposite of AI by night.

Especially now, when nearly everyone is claiming they can build something, without thinking, that will quietly strip away our ability and our need to think, and when too many people on social media seem bent on contributing to demoralization campaigns even when it doesn't serve them, we believe that a game that truly challenges you and makes you think more while having fun is extremely valuable. We have also watched the backlash as some big-name apps ram ai down their users' throats. So we are glad that we made the call at the start that we wouldn't hand over to ai anything we knew would be better if we did it ourselves, slowly and without shortcuts, every idea tested on real people, even when it cost us a great deal more time, patience, and expertise than we thought we had.

Fundamentally, we made this game because it is 2026 and it is time to make the things that you feel in your core that only you can make: the things that must exist because you love them, that you love so much you know you can serve the people who use them for decades, the things that will help people have more fun, think harder, and feel better about the incredible thing it is to be a human being.

Now go play. Link just below.

[Logic Islands @LogicIslandsApp]

We're live on the App Store and Google Play!

Hundreds of hand-crafted puzzles, 10 islands (and growing) each with its own logic, new daily puzzles trios every day, and a lot more! Go play! Links below.

[bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv_neursci]

Vigilance and behavioral state-dependent modulation of cortical neuronal activity throughout the sleep/wake cycle https://t.co/5PDZ5oHI5E #biorxiv_neursci

[Nadia Gasmi @NadiaGasmi]

4) there are model-specific differences in microgliosis and astrogliosis, and 5) that microglial cells appear to produce most of the IL1β during the acute phase of epileptogenesis. 6/6

[Nadia Gasmi @NadiaGasmi]

Excited to share this first preprint from my thesis work! If you've ever wondered about the level of inflammation in the epileptic brain, check this out! Thread below👇
#neuroinflammation #epilepsy

https://t.co/UUjhUklAlG

1/6

[Nadia Gasmi @NadiaGasmi]

3) that in preclinical models of pilocarpine-induced epilepsy, inflammation is of low grade during chronic epilepsy compared to explosive inflammation during epileptogenesis. 5/6

[Samuel Marsh, Ph.D. @samuel_marsh]

Excited to share first preprint from my postdoc work in Stevens lab: “Single Cell Sequencing Reveals Glial Specific Responses to Tissue Processing & Enzymatic Dissociation in Mice and Humans” a thread below #singlecell #microglia #methodsmatter 1/n

https://t.co/6jctaGzQ4M

[Nadia Gasmi @NadiaGasmi]

@NareshaSaligra1 Hello, I’m interested in the postdoc offer but it seems like I can't send you a DM on Twitter. Can I contact you by email?

[Jeff Karp (Pronouns: he/him/his) @MrJeffKarp]

Our latest MSC opinion / review piece :) Shattering barriers toward clinically meaningful MSC therapies https://t.co/MsCGk6jB0C

[Cell @CellCellPress]

#brain-resident CD4+ #Tcells are required for #microglia maturation and proper #synaptic pruning and #behavior in both #mice and #humans
Video abstract and Article👉https://t.co/mpoGDZY1y2

[Jonathan Kipnis 🟦 @jonykipnis]

Congrats @LabListon on a beautiful work showing effects of T cells on behavior through regulation of microglia. Another evidence that adaptive immunity is regulating brain function. || https://t.co/I8L8M46lMl

[storiesofWiN @storiesofwin]

We started a project #storiesofWiN to highlight the stories of women neuroscientists from diverse backgrounds and at different career stages. We are launching soon!! Follow us, retweet us, help us spread the word! #WomenInSTEM #neuroscience #myfirstTweet

[Stem Cells Portal @StemCellsPortal]

Pro inflammatory stimuli enhance the immunosuppressive functions of adipose mesenchymal stem cells-derived exosomes (Sci Rep) https://t.co/sMVrHkpE8Z https://t.co/sMVrHkpE8Z

[Nadia Gasmi @NadiaGasmi]

Anti-Donor Immune Responses Elicited by Allogeneic Mesenchymal Stem Cells and Their Extracellular Vesicles: Are We Still Learning? https://t.co/EnPAvaxFqA