New neuro episode with Dr. Tom Oxley (@tomoxl), co-founder and CEO of Synchron (@synchroninc). Synchron has built a BCI called the Stentrode, which reaches the motor cortex via a blood vessel — leveraging the approach of cardiovascular stents, without having to open the skull at all! 15 million people live with motor impairment. The Stentrode lets people operate their phones and computers through thought, and could restore independence to people who've lost the ability to control their devices. Tom sees BCIs as a major technological leap that will help human flourishing, by enabling better communication, decoding and conveying emotions, and enabling us to leverage the great capabilities of our computing infrastructure. This was a great, wide-ranging conversation. We discuss the origins of Synchron, the endovascular approach and its benefits, their next-gen system designed for high-channel-count recordings across distributed brain regions, the longer-term possibilities of helping people communicate better, how Tom developed as a founder and how he leads the company, how BCIs could unlock powerful mental states similar to psychedelics and meditation, how neurotech will transform humanity in the 2030s and 2040s, and why Tom thinks the US will lose the BCI race to China unless the US greatly accelerates. Hope you enjoy! Other links to this episode and references below. Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction 00:03:18 Carl Jung, stroke surgery, and the road to BCI 00:06:58 The endovascular approach: reaching the brain without surgery 00:10:37 Getting Synchron off the ground 00:17:23 Reading the brain: channels, signal, and noise 00:36:41 The numbers: 15M patients, FDA, and Medicare 00:43:17 Cognitive AI: foundation models, the data economy, and the 2040s 00:52:55 Consciousness, psychedelics, and the extended self 01:02:51 Agency, addiction, and geopolitics 01:06:51 The optimistic vision: unlocking the subconscious 01:10:49 Building a company: 696 no's 01:21:30 Losing the BCI lead to China

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

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 🧵

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 🛝)

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! 🧪🌍🔭

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) 🔥

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.

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!

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.

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: cla.purdue.edu/news/college/…

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.

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: stellatecomms.com/team

PL Neuro is officially live! plneuro.xyz 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

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: preston.clm.utexas.edu/news/… Please repost!

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: forms.gle/VACAMuoaRbWRG7tp9

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: stellatecomms.com/creative

📍 #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 🧠🤖

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: cell.com/cell/fulltex... Announcement: arcinstitute.org/news/ketone…

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: arcinstitute.org/news/meet-m…

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.