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It’s that time of the year again… We’re saying goodbye to Bryan, Steve, and Danielle. Bryan, who has been working with us as a student intern for nearly 2 years, has graduated from Columbia University. He will remain in the city as a research worker under Dr. Yunglin Gazes in the Taub Institute at Columbia Medical Center. Danielle has completed her research year with us and will be continuing onto her 4th year of medical school at UCSF. Steve has finished his behavioral neurology fellowship at UCSF and has accepted a full-time position as Assistant Professor of Neurology at Boston University. It’s always sad to part with people who have contributed so dearly to the lab’s work and social culture, but we are excited to see them moving on to accomplish great things!

Many congratulations to super UCSF med students Abraham Dada and Danielle Hart, who presented their posters at the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting in Boston.

Abe’s poster, “Factors mediating public perceptions of therapeutic closed-loop brain implants for epilepsy and mood disorders,” included data from a national survey characterizing mediators of demographic differences in the prospecive acceptability of closed loop implanted devices. Danielle’s poster, “Financial toxicity in dementia caregiving,” included data from a national survey of dementia caregivers indicating that Black, non-Hispanic caregivers were more likely to experience financial toxicity than white, non-Hispanic caregivers; with age as a somewhat surprising protective factor.

Congratulations to our fearless leader, Winston, who was officially appointed as the Executive Director of UCSF Bioethics!

Serving as Interim Director of UCSF Bioethics since late October 2021, Winston has worked to strengthen our interdisciplinary community of discourse on responsible clinical practice, discovery, and education in the context of broader and long-overdue discussions about justice and health equity throughout our institution. As Executive Director, he will be responsible for the integration of bioethics as an integral component of UCSF’s research, training, and clinical missions. Way to go!

Well, this perfectly mediocre season has been a bit of a letdown for the Giants, just a year after a tremendously fun season. However, this final home game of the season is probably the best game we’ve attended as a lab. (Sadly, no one remembered to take pictures on June 7, though that game was pretty boring anyway.)

In this case we got to hang out together on a sunny day with a great view, also with some very cute kids and both garlic fries and regular fries. And a really fun game with lead changes, action (Giants ended multiple innings with double plays to wipe out a runner crossing the plate) and an extra-innings walkoff with a play at the plate! Can’t wait for next year!

It’s Postdoc Appreciation Week again! Clara Sanches and I went out for a coffee and a chat. While trying to avoid talking about her upcoming SfN poster, we got to discussing Julia Brown’s great recent book launch event, through which I learned from Clara about Esmé Weijun Wang’s fascinating collection, The Collected Schizophrenias. Really looking forward to checking it out once this coming set of grants is in!…

I recently had the chance to give two presentations about neuroethics, which (for better or worse) are recorded on YouTube. On April 5 I was invited to the University of Washington Electrical & Computer Engineering Colloquium to present on “Patient experiences with implanted closed-loop neuromodulation as inputs for human-centered design”–had a wonderful series of very interesting conversations with faculty in engineering and in bioethics during my visit to Seattle:

On April 9 I got to participate in a great panel discussion as part of the Science Ethics and Policy Symposium on the UC Berkeley campus, with the always-thoughtful Sara Goering (yes of course, also at UW!) and moderated by Narayan Sankaran: