2025-26 Inspiring Speakers
From September 11, 2025, through May 14, 2026, talks occur monthly on Thursdays from 10:00 – 11:15 am. They take place in the Workshop (room 1116) on the 11th floor of the Wu Tsai Institute at 100 College Street. Coffee and refreshments are served in the adjacent Lounge before each talk, beginning at 9:00 am. All members of the Yale community are welcome to connect with colleagues and get inspired by visitors. Please contact wti@yale.edu to request a meeting with the speaker (as space allows) or if you have any accessibility-related needs.
Past Talks
Talks from prior years of the Inspiring Speakers Series can be reviewed below or in our event listings. Many of the talks were recorded and have been shared on YouTube. Subscribe to the Wu Tsai Institute’s channel to stay current on the latest talks.
Jane Wang, Google DeepMind
On the importance of acting in a complex world (May 15, 2025)
Dean Buonomano, University of California, Los Angeles
The nature and neuroscience of time (May 1, 2025)
Karla Miller, University of Oxford
MRI methods for crossing scales in neuroscience (March 27, 2025)
Olaf Sporns, Indiana University Bloomington
Connectomics and network science: Understanding the brain as a complex system (March 6, 2025)
R. Clay Reid, Allen Institute
Network anatomy at cellular resolution in mouse and human brains (February 27, 2025)
Morgan Barense, University of Toronto
Enhancing real-world event memory (February 20, 2025)
P. Robin Hiesinger, Freie Universität Berlin
How genomes make neural networks (January 23, 2025)
Andrew Leifer, Princeton University
Neural signal propagation atlas of C. elegans (January 9, 2025)
Katja Brose, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
From publishing to philanthropy: Seeing science from 30,000 feet (December 12, 2024)
Joel Zylberberg, York University
A neuro-AI framework for visual neuroscience: Digital twins of the eyes and the brain (November 14, 2024)
Jennifer E. Phillips-Cremins, University of Pennsylvania
The science of connections: Bridging chromatin, synaptic plasticity, and neurophysiology (October 31, 2024)
Owen D. Jones, Vanderbilt University
The promise and peril of neurolaw (September 19, 2024)
Michael C. Frank, Stanford University
Bridging the data gap between children and AI models (September 5, 2024)
Wei Ji Ma, New York University
From adaptive planning to efficient coding (April 8, 2024)
Geoff Schoenbaum, National Institute on Drug Abuse
Generalized cognitive mapping in the orbitofrontal cortex (March 22, 2024)
John Krakauer, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
The cognitive-motor interface: Two kinds of intelligence (March 18, 2024)
Aaron Batista, University of Pittsburgh
The view of cognition from the motor cortex (March 4, 2024)
Dani S. Bassett, University of Pennsylvania
Network cognition in a curious world (February 26, 2024)
Lila Davachi, Columbia University
The wisdom of the unconscious mind (February 23, 2024)
Christopher Baldassano, Columbia University
Building neural representations for realistic event sequences (February 19, 2024)
Nanthia Suthana, UCLA
Unraveling memories on the go (February 12, 2024)
Tim Buschman, Princeton University
Neural dynamics of cognitive control (February 2, 2024)
Timothy Brady, UC San Diego
Population-based representations as an explanation for perception, working memory and long-term memory errors (January 29, 2024)
Sabine Kastner, Princeton University
Attention control in the primate brain (January 19, 2024)