Kristin Branson
@kristinmbranson.bsky.social
Researcher in machine learning and computer vision for science. Senior Group Leader at HHMI Janelia Research Campus. Supporter of DEIB in science and tech. CV: https://bit.ly/BransonCV
Reposted by Kristin Branson
When it comes to text prediction, where does one LM outperform another? If you've ever worked on LM evals, you know this question is a lot more complex than it seems. In our new #acl2025 paper, we developed a method to find fine-grained differences between LMs:
🧵1/9
🧵1/9
June 9, 2025 at 1:47 PM
When it comes to text prediction, where does one LM outperform another? If you've ever worked on LM evals, you know this question is a lot more complex than it seems. In our new #acl2025 paper, we developed a method to find fine-grained differences between LMs:
🧵1/9
🧵1/9
Reposted by Kristin Branson
🪰 A new ‘Eyemap’ developed by a team led by Arthur Zhao & @michaelreiser.bsky.social reveals how visual information detected by the fly’s eye shows up in neurons deep in the brain. Remarkably, the eye’s shape determines how flies see motion.👁️
🔗 hhmi.news/4kSZjou
🔗 hhmi.news/4kSZjou
July 23, 2025 at 3:18 PM
🪰 A new ‘Eyemap’ developed by a team led by Arthur Zhao & @michaelreiser.bsky.social reveals how visual information detected by the fly’s eye shows up in neurons deep in the brain. Remarkably, the eye’s shape determines how flies see motion.👁️
🔗 hhmi.news/4kSZjou
🔗 hhmi.news/4kSZjou
TIL when upgrading your Ubuntu OS, sometimes it will just hang and not tell you what's going on. The solution is just to hold down the Enter key until it starts going again:
www.kubuntuforums.net/forum/curren...
www.kubuntuforums.net/forum/curren...
Upgrade from 20.04 to 22.04 hangs; terminal not interactive -
Kubuntu Forums
I got tired of always ignoring the popups saying I needed to upgrade 20.04 (my Fossa was now a fossil...) so I clicked on the Upgrade button in the popup itself, which gave me some kind of terminal wi...
www.kubuntuforums.net
July 17, 2025 at 2:41 PM
TIL when upgrading your Ubuntu OS, sometimes it will just hang and not tell you what's going on. The solution is just to hold down the Enter key until it starts going again:
www.kubuntuforums.net/forum/curren...
www.kubuntuforums.net/forum/curren...
Reposted by Kristin Branson
Excited to be presenting my paper "Deep Learning is Not So Mysterious or Different" tomorrow at ICML, 11 am - 1:30 pm, East Exhibition Hall A-B, E-500. I made a little video overview as part of the ICML process (viewable from Chrome): recorder-v3.slideslive.com#/share?share...
July 17, 2025 at 12:16 AM
Excited to be presenting my paper "Deep Learning is Not So Mysterious or Different" tomorrow at ICML, 11 am - 1:30 pm, East Exhibition Hall A-B, E-500. I made a little video overview as part of the ICML process (viewable from Chrome): recorder-v3.slideslive.com#/share?share...
Reposted by Kristin Branson
I recently participated in the High-Level Expert Panel on AGI, convened by the Council of Presidents of the UN General Assembly, which has just released its final report on the Governance of the Transition to AGI. Report below ⬇️
uncpga.world/agi-uncpga-r...
uncpga.world/agi-uncpga-r...
AGI UNCPGA Report | Council of Presidents of the United Nations General Assembly
AGI UNCPGA Report
uncpga.world
May 31, 2025 at 3:15 PM
I recently participated in the High-Level Expert Panel on AGI, convened by the Council of Presidents of the UN General Assembly, which has just released its final report on the Governance of the Transition to AGI. Report below ⬇️
uncpga.world/agi-uncpga-r...
uncpga.world/agi-uncpga-r...
cute little label at the bottom of a climb that i thought applies to lots of things, including this "5.9"
May 12, 2025 at 1:53 PM
cute little label at the bottom of a climb that i thought applies to lots of things, including this "5.9"
Had fun slotting together my new Framework 13 laptop! Look how cute my purple USB port is!
May 8, 2025 at 12:37 PM
Had fun slotting together my new Framework 13 laptop! Look how cute my purple USB port is!
I'd really like someone to get AI to solve package management for me. (I convinced myself to try to learn pixi this week and it has not solved all my problems.)
April 21, 2025 at 3:26 PM
I'd really like someone to get AI to solve package management for me. (I convinced myself to try to learn pixi this week and it has not solved all my problems.)
Reposted by Kristin Branson
BirdCLEF25: Audio-based species identification focused on birds, amphibians, mammals, and insects in Colombia.
👉 www.kaggle.com/competitions...
@cvprconference.bsky.social @kaggle.com
#FGVC #CVPR #CVPR2025 #LifeCLEF
[1/4]
👉 www.kaggle.com/competitions...
@cvprconference.bsky.social @kaggle.com
#FGVC #CVPR #CVPR2025 #LifeCLEF
[1/4]
April 9, 2025 at 10:22 AM
BirdCLEF25: Audio-based species identification focused on birds, amphibians, mammals, and insects in Colombia.
👉 www.kaggle.com/competitions...
@cvprconference.bsky.social @kaggle.com
#FGVC #CVPR #CVPR2025 #LifeCLEF
[1/4]
👉 www.kaggle.com/competitions...
@cvprconference.bsky.social @kaggle.com
#FGVC #CVPR #CVPR2025 #LifeCLEF
[1/4]
Highly recommend the tutorial notebook by @briandepasquale.bsky.social for a good intro to GNNs and also working with Drosophila connectomics data!
tinyurl.com/cosyne-gnn-2...
tinyurl.com/cosyne-gnn-2...
April 3, 2025 at 4:59 PM
Highly recommend the tutorial notebook by @briandepasquale.bsky.social for a good intro to GNNs and also working with Drosophila connectomics data!
tinyurl.com/cosyne-gnn-2...
tinyurl.com/cosyne-gnn-2...
Flies are exceptionally good at fast and efficient visual motion processing. I'm fascinated by the heuristics/hacks evolution has come up with for processing motion in a moving animal. What can computer vision for robotics or on the edge learn from this?
I know there's a 𝒍𝒐𝒕 going on right now, but I couldn’t be prouder to share this long-incubated labor of love: the complete connectome of the male 𝐷𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑎 optic lobe 🧠🪰
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Connectome-driven neural inventory of a complete visual system - Nature
A connectome of the right optic lobe from a male fruitfly is presented together with an extensive collection of genetic drivers matched to a comprehensive neuron-type catalogue.
www.nature.com
March 28, 2025 at 1:28 PM
Flies are exceptionally good at fast and efficient visual motion processing. I'm fascinated by the heuristics/hacks evolution has come up with for processing motion in a moving animal. What can computer vision for robotics or on the edge learn from this?
Reposted by Kristin Branson
I know there's a 𝒍𝒐𝒕 going on right now, but I couldn’t be prouder to share this long-incubated labor of love: the complete connectome of the male 𝐷𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑎 optic lobe 🧠🪰
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Connectome-driven neural inventory of a complete visual system - Nature
A connectome of the right optic lobe from a male fruitfly is presented together with an extensive collection of genetic drivers matched to a comprehensive neuron-type catalogue.
www.nature.com
March 27, 2025 at 10:58 PM
I know there's a 𝒍𝒐𝒕 going on right now, but I couldn’t be prouder to share this long-incubated labor of love: the complete connectome of the male 𝐷𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑎 optic lobe 🧠🪰
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Excited to participate in the Graph Neural Networks workshop at Cosyne on Monday March 31 (day 1):
IT’S ALL CONNECTED!
Graph approaches to geometric complexity in neuroscience
sites.google.com/bu.edu/gnnwo...
Hope to see you there!
IT’S ALL CONNECTED!
Graph approaches to geometric complexity in neuroscience
sites.google.com/bu.edu/gnnwo...
Hope to see you there!
gnnworkshop cosyne2025
It's All Connected!
sites.google.com
March 28, 2025 at 11:30 AM
Excited to participate in the Graph Neural Networks workshop at Cosyne on Monday March 31 (day 1):
IT’S ALL CONNECTED!
Graph approaches to geometric complexity in neuroscience
sites.google.com/bu.edu/gnnwo...
Hope to see you there!
IT’S ALL CONNECTED!
Graph approaches to geometric complexity in neuroscience
sites.google.com/bu.edu/gnnwo...
Hope to see you there!
Reposted by Kristin Branson
Oh I'm very into open science approaches that deploy Jupyter Notebooks. I really like what @arcadiascience.com is doing with their new publication efforts & team - research.arcadiascience.com/pub/perspect...
Closing the divide between analysis and publication: The notebook pub
We're experimenting with treating our computational notebooks as publications themselves. This approach reduces publication burden, encourages faster publishing, and builds in reproducibility. Scienti...
research.arcadiascience.com
March 25, 2025 at 11:35 PM
Oh I'm very into open science approaches that deploy Jupyter Notebooks. I really like what @arcadiascience.com is doing with their new publication efforts & team - research.arcadiascience.com/pub/perspect...
Reposted by Kristin Branson
This piece is evergreen: www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-u...
A University President Responds to Those Who Have Suggested the School Should Dip Into the Endowment
To the esteemed members of our faculty and staff,
As president of this University, there is nothing more important to me than the health and safety...
www.mcsweeneys.net
March 25, 2025 at 8:20 PM
This piece is evergreen: www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/a-u...
Reposted by Kristin Branson
Please share broadly to your networks so this can reach its intended audience! And we are also looking for volunteers to help instruct/mentor. Details here: cv4ecology.caltech.edu/ai-upskillin...
AI upskilling workshop for former US/state conservation scientists
cv4ecology.caltech.edu
March 25, 2025 at 6:19 PM
Please share broadly to your networks so this can reach its intended audience! And we are also looking for volunteers to help instruct/mentor. Details here: cv4ecology.caltech.edu/ai-upskillin...
Reposted by Kristin Branson
@cosynemeeting.bsky.social GNN workshop speaker profile 3 is Ashok Litwin-Kumar, of @columbiauniversity.bsky.social! Ashok has been a driving force in connectomics-based modeling.
March 24, 2025 at 9:02 PM
@cosynemeeting.bsky.social GNN workshop speaker profile 3 is Ashok Litwin-Kumar, of @columbiauniversity.bsky.social! Ashok has been a driving force in connectomics-based modeling.
Reposted by Kristin Branson
Excited to be presenting this work at #cosyne2025 this week - as a poster (session 3, no. 3-017) and as part of the “Reimagining RL in the Brain” workshop organised by Alison Comrie and @nathanieldaw.bsky.social. My first in-person cosyne, so looking forward to it!
The first preprint of my postdoc with @dudman.bsky.social is now online! Here we wanted to understand the algorithms mice use when learning to forage in large environments with many potential resources. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
March 24, 2025 at 4:11 PM
Excited to be presenting this work at #cosyne2025 this week - as a poster (session 3, no. 3-017) and as part of the “Reimagining RL in the Brain” workshop organised by Alison Comrie and @nathanieldaw.bsky.social. My first in-person cosyne, so looking forward to it!
Reposted by Kristin Branson
After hearing about the ongoing hotel workers strike at the #COSYNE2025 hotel, I cancelled my reservation and booked a room at a hotel a short 10 minute walk from the meeting. It was easy and I encourage others to do the same! #solidarity montreal.citynews.ca/2025/01/14/q...
Montreal’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel reopens after temporarily closing during holidays due to labour dispute
The Fairmont Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal has reopened after temporarily closing due to an ongoing labour dispute. Quebec’s largest hotel made the announcement on Dec. 12 and shut their doors day...
montreal.citynews.ca
March 24, 2025 at 12:14 AM
After hearing about the ongoing hotel workers strike at the #COSYNE2025 hotel, I cancelled my reservation and booked a room at a hotel a short 10 minute walk from the meeting. It was easy and I encourage others to do the same! #solidarity montreal.citynews.ca/2025/01/14/q...
Reposted by Kristin Branson
I'm organizing a "Data for Good Rapid Response Team", i.e. a set of people who can be mobilized to work on short data science projects to help various groups and organizations. Sign up here if this is of interest to you, and please share with others with data science skills.
Data-for-good rapid response team
I'm collecting people with data science skills who may want to hear about sporadic opportunities to use their skills for good on short projects. Project themes will center on topics I am connected wit...
docs.google.com
March 23, 2025 at 5:21 PM
I'm organizing a "Data for Good Rapid Response Team", i.e. a set of people who can be mobilized to work on short data science projects to help various groups and organizations. Sign up here if this is of interest to you, and please share with others with data science skills.
Looking forward to learning all about the newest in graph neural nets at Cosyne next week!
Just over a week to #cosyne2025 workshops! Speaker profile number 2 for GNN workshop w/ @neurokim.bsky.social and Sam Lewallen is @kristinmbranson.bsky.social of @hhmijanelia.bsky.social!
Kristin’s lab develops cutting edge machine vision approaches for quantitatively studying animal behavior.
Kristin’s lab develops cutting edge machine vision approaches for quantitatively studying animal behavior.
March 23, 2025 at 5:18 PM
Looking forward to learning all about the newest in graph neural nets at Cosyne next week!
Reposted by Kristin Branson
I sat down with Jaida Elcock (@sofishtication.bsky.social), a marine biologist studying basking sharks, and Danny (@ecoevodanny.bsky.social), a coral researcher & HHMI (@hhmi.org) Gilliam Fellow, to talk all things ocean! 🦈🌿🌊
We explored their journeys, research, and more!
We explored their journeys, research, and more!
March 19, 2025 at 6:42 PM
I sat down with Jaida Elcock (@sofishtication.bsky.social), a marine biologist studying basking sharks, and Danny (@ecoevodanny.bsky.social), a coral researcher & HHMI (@hhmi.org) Gilliam Fellow, to talk all things ocean! 🦈🌿🌊
We explored their journeys, research, and more!
We explored their journeys, research, and more!
Reposted by Kristin Branson
Want to procedurally generate large-scale relational reasoning experiments in natural language, to study human psychology 🧠 or eval LLMs 🤖?
We have a tool for you! Our latest #ICLR work on long-context/relational reasoning evaluation for LLMs ReCogLab!
github.com/google-deepm...
Thread ⬇️
We have a tool for you! Our latest #ICLR work on long-context/relational reasoning evaluation for LLMs ReCogLab!
github.com/google-deepm...
Thread ⬇️
March 18, 2025 at 4:45 PM
Want to procedurally generate large-scale relational reasoning experiments in natural language, to study human psychology 🧠 or eval LLMs 🤖?
We have a tool for you! Our latest #ICLR work on long-context/relational reasoning evaluation for LLMs ReCogLab!
github.com/google-deepm...
Thread ⬇️
We have a tool for you! Our latest #ICLR work on long-context/relational reasoning evaluation for LLMs ReCogLab!
github.com/google-deepm...
Thread ⬇️
Reposted by Kristin Branson
Scientists have just cured pancreatic cancer in some patients with personalized mRNA vaccines. Pancreatic cancer. And this Trump administration wants to throw it all away.
They’re throwing away a cure for cancer.
They’re throwing away a cure for cancer.
Exclusive: NIH officials have advised scientists to remove reference to mRNA vaccines from their grant applications, in expectation the Trump administration intends to abandon most research in the field.
By @arthurallen202.bsky.social
kffhealthnews.org/news/article...
By @arthurallen202.bsky.social
kffhealthnews.org/news/article...
Scientists Say NIH Officials Told Them To Scrub mRNA References on Grants - KFF Health News
Two senior scientists say National Institutes of Health officials advised them to remove references to mRNA vaccines in grant applications, and they fear the Trump administration will abandon a promis...
kffhealthnews.org
March 17, 2025 at 1:16 AM
Scientists have just cured pancreatic cancer in some patients with personalized mRNA vaccines. Pancreatic cancer. And this Trump administration wants to throw it all away.
They’re throwing away a cure for cancer.
They’re throwing away a cure for cancer.
I'm reading up on code generation evaluation, and I appreciate that the paper about APPS starts with the quote feom Steve Jobs, "Everybody should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think"
arxiv.org/pdf/2105.09938
Amen
arxiv.org/pdf/2105.09938
Amen
arxiv.org
March 17, 2025 at 1:52 PM
I'm reading up on code generation evaluation, and I appreciate that the paper about APPS starts with the quote feom Steve Jobs, "Everybody should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think"
arxiv.org/pdf/2105.09938
Amen
arxiv.org/pdf/2105.09938
Amen