Orthogonal Research and Education Laboratory

04/25/2025

Announcing Data x Direction's Data Ethics & Responsible AI Research internship! Applications opened this week.

Also, we will be announcing Google Summer of Code contributors for 2025 in the coming weeks, as well. Thank you, as always, to the International Neuroinformatics Coordination Facility for your support sponsorship.

Our combined Summer Cohort looks to be promising this year - cant' wait to carry on our tradition of summer learning, coding, and exploring this year with an excellent batch of students!

Summer Opportunity. Remote Data Science Internship: Rolling Applications starting in April, through August 2025, with opportunities to continue afterward.

04/07/2025

Call for Google Summer of Code Contributors: Open-Source Projects with Orthogonal Research and Education Laboratory + DevoWorm of OpenWorm Foundation!

Are you a student or new developer seeking a challenging, impactful summer project? Do you want to contribute to open-source solutions, collaborate with experts, and explore the frontiers of computational biology and open source & coding sustainability? We invite you to apply for GSoC 2025 with our group as a mentoring organization, under the banner of International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF)!

This year, we’re featuring two projects:

Project #4: OpenWorm / DevoWorm / DevoGraph
Dive into the world of developmental biology and computational modeling as you help develop tools and pipelines that unify worm development data, graph analysis, and visualization techniques.

Project #5: Orthogonal Research - Open Source Community Sustainability
Focus on community building, contributor onboarding, and maintaining open-source best practices to ensure long-term project viability and a vibrant research ecosystem.
As a GSoC contributor, you’ll work closely with mentors from Orthogonal Research & Education Lab, gain hands-on coding experience, and be part of a diverse community of researchers, developers, and scientists. Your contributions will bolster open-science initiatives, drive innovation, and potentially shape how researchers collaborate in the future.

How to Apply

Review Project Details:
Project #4: OpenWorm / DevoWorm / DevoGraph
https://lnkd.in/e-3biZqX

Project #5: Orthogonal Research Open Source Community Sustainability
https://lnkd.in/eUv2NTsM

Engage with Mentors: Post questions or introduce yourself on the Neurostars forum, or join our Slack workspaces.

Submit Your Proposal: Complete your application via the GSoC website. Be sure to include your ideas, project scope, and any relevant experience.

Submission Deadline: Please check the official GSoC timeline for final dates and details - submissions are due April 8!

Join us for a summer of coding, discovery, and collaboration at Orthogonal Research & Education Lab—together, we’ll advance open-source innovation and research!

Send a message to learn more

10/05/2021

We had quite a busy summer - here's a quick recap:

This Summer has been quite busy in the Orthogonal Research and Education Lab in terms of conference presentations. The Saturday Morning…

05/13/2021

Accepted at Inverse Generative Social Science Workshop 2021! Congratulations Bradly Alicea and Jesse Parent.

https://www.igss-workshop.org/

04/19/2021

Neuromatch Academy applications are now open! Last year, we had a pre-course study group and had several lab members as volunteers, mentors, and intensive track students. We hope to do the same this year! Apply today and stay tuned for OREL's involvement!

PS: Particular shout out for TA's - Neuormatch TAs (DL and Computational Neuroscience) will be PAID! please help contribute to this wonderful and cutting-edge program.

https://portal.neuromatchacademy.org/sign-in

09/13/2018

"Information Thermodynamics of Turing Patterns": https://buff.ly/2x09bHY

We set up a rigorous thermodynamic description of reaction-diffusion systems driven out of equilibrium by time-dependent space-distributed chemostats. Building on the assumption of local equilibrium, nonequilibrium thermodynamic potentials are constructed exploiting the symmetries of the chemical ne...

09/12/2018

New paper: "Plasticity of chemotaxis revealed by paired presentation of a chemoattractant and starvation in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans":

While the basic functioning of the nervous system of Caenorhabditis elegans has been extensively studied, its behavioural plasticities have not been fully explored because of the limited availability of assay systems. We report here a simple form of chemotaxis plasticity in this organism: when worms...

08/29/2018

: Saddle-Node Bifurcation (from Scholarpedia): https://buff.ly/2BPXAjM Saddle-shaped map of the C. elegans embryo: https://buff.ly/2MPx8eo

A saddle-node bifurcation is a collision and disappearance of two equilibria in dynamical systems. In systems generated by autonomous ODEs, this occurs when the critical equilibrium has one zero eigenvalue. This phenomenon is also called fold or limit point bifurcation. A discrete version of this bi...

08/28/2018

"Indigenous Peoples are Decolonizing Virtual Worlds" from on Medium:

Your mission is to explore space until you find your missing sister. You set off for the stars in your grandfather’s space canoe. Along the way, you visit different planets and meet a galaxy of…

08/26/2018

New Google Summer of Code final presentation from the DevoWorm group:

mentee Arnab Banerjee (Developmental Networks and XML): https://buff.ly/2Ne6Hfq

Arnab Banerjee's final Google Summer of Code project presentation to the DevoWorm Group. Presentation done on August 24, 2018.