Summer Update: Things are happening... and lining up!

Admittedly, it's been a bit quiet this summer. But a few things have been brewing...

With a deleted Twitter account and avoidance of any things online (yes, that includes email), I had time to read, think, write, and do a number of things that have piled on and were postponed for a year now (pandemic-related). I also did that sports thing I plan each new year. 

First good news: the lab is now really coming to a start. (We'll call it THE STINK TANK.)

The renovations are moving toward the end. Currently, the estimate is the end of August. The olfactometer is close to being finished. The EEG has already arrived. AND my first graduate student and two undergraduate interns will join me this Fall. Lots of things we need to figure out, tinkering and testing, before we can go ahead with ideas. But this is an exciting start after a year's wait and uncertainty.

You can see the current lab status pictures below. 

Second good news: there will be a TEDxCambridge talk online this Fall/Winter... I cannot hide how excited I am about this. The team has been amazing and I learned ... SHIT TONS (official metric). More on that in time, too. 

Picture below, too. I may include that one in my tenure file... 

The third good news is that John Bickle, Carl Craver, and I have submitted our edited volume on Experimental Tools in Neuroscience to Routledge. It might come out already Winter 2021!! For this, Lu Xu (Firestein lab, Columbia) and I co-wrote a first hand account on her application of SCAPE microscopy in odor mixture coding  (pointing toward the cognitive foundations of tool use). 

Additionally, a new paper is coming out soon (Perspectives on Science, proofs have been sent off), another co-authored one is under review.

Oh yeah... and my criticism of the arguments behind this recent revival of panpsychism in some corners of the philosophy of mind (and Phil Twitter) is coming out as a book chapter soon, too. I promised, I'd write about it. So stay tuned. ;-)

Summer has been busy. ​So, hopefully, things keep moving well. Fingers crossed!

​Meanwhile, stay safe, well, and sane ;-)