It's Paris, It's Mecca, It's a Dream. Former students wax poetic when they reflect on their MBL days. Download a complete 2008 Course Schedule

2008 Special Topics Courses

Analytical & Quantitative Light Microscopy

Directors: Greenfield Sluder and David Wolf
A comprehensive and intensive course in light microscopy for researchers in biology, medicine, and material sciences. This course provides an in-depth examination of the theory of image formation and application of video methods for exploring subtle interactions between light and the specimen.

BioMedical Informatics

Director: James Cimino

Principal Investigator: Cathy Norton
This week-long survey course is designed to familiarize individuals with the application of computer technologies and information science in medicine. Through a combination of lectures and hands-on computer exercises, participants will be introduced to the conceptual and technical components of medical informatics.

Fundamental Issues in Vision Research

Directors: Sandra Masur, and David Papermaster

A lecture and laboratory course, experimentally based and problem oriented, intended for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows currently training in molecular biology, cell biology, and neurosciences and who are not currently involved in vision research, and others in early stages of vision research who wish to broaden their interests in the field.

Gene Regulatory Networks for Development
Directors: Eric Davidson , and David McClay
A 10-day course comprised of morning lectures followed by workshop discussions; afternoon computer practicals leading to student projects; and wet lab demonstrations of gene regulatory perturbation analysis in vivo.

Methods in Computational Neuroscience

Directors: Adrienne Fairhall, and Michael Berry
Animals interact with a complex world, encountering a wide variety of challenges: they must gather data about the environment, discover useful structures in these data, store and recall information about past events, plan and guide actions, learn the consequences of these actions, etc. These are, in part, computational problems that are solved by networks of neurons, from roughly 100 cells in a small worm to 100 billion in humans. Careful study of the natural context for these tasks leads to new mathematical formulations of the problems that brains are solving, and these theoretical approaches in turn suggest new experiments to characterize neurons and networks. This interplay between theory and experiment is the central theme of this course.

Molecular Biology of Aging

Directors: Steven N. Austad, and Gary B. Ruvkun
A three-week lecture and laboratory course featuring the newest and most exciting ideas in aging research, with emphasis on molecular approaches. A distinguished faculty will interact with students via lecture, discussion, hands-on experiments and analysis of data.

Molecular Mycology: Current Approaches to Fungal Pathogenesis

Directors: J. E. Edwards, Aaron P. Mitchell, and Paul T. Magee

This course provides state-of-the-art training in molecular methods for studying fungal pathogens important in human disease. The course is designed for advanced graduate students, postdocs, and independent investigators.

Zebrafish Development and Genetics

Directors: Chi-Bin Chien, and Mary Mullins
An intensive two-week course for advanced graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and independent investigators that will focus on the development and genetics of zebrafish with special emphasis on the nervous system.

Neuroinformatics

Directors: Partha Mitra, and David Kleinfeld
The ability to digitally acquire, store and analyze large volumes of multichannel data in the neurosciences, ranging from multiple spike trains to brain images, has given rise to a new and growing body of research. This two-week course is structured around the related issues, and will contain both pedagogical lectures on the basic statistical techniques as well as focussed mini-workshops on specific neuroscience topics where applications of these techniques are critical.

NeuroStereology Workshop

Director: Mark West

The goal of the workshop is to teach research scientists how to design, supervise, and critically evaluate stereological studies of the nervous system.  Stereology is a methodology that provides meaningful quantitative descriptions of the geometry of three-dimensional structures from measurements that are made on two-dimensional images sampled from a structure of interest.

Optical Microscopy & Imaging in the Biomedical Sciences

Directors: Robert Hard, and Colin Izzard
This course is designed primarily for research scientists, physicians, postdoctoral trainees, and advanced graduate students in animal, plant, medical, and material sciences. Non-biologists seeking a comprehensive introduction to microscopy and video imaging will benefit greatly from the course. There are no prerequisites, but an understanding of the basic principles of optics is desirable.

Pathogenesis of Neuroimmunologic Diseases

Summer 2009. Directors: Robert Darnell, Joan Goverman, and Richard Ransohoff
A two-week program of lectures and discussion will describe how genetic, molecular, and cell physiologic concepts and techniques in immunology and neuroscience are applied to clarifying the pathogenesis of neurologic and psychiatric diseases thought to have an immunologic basis.

Seminar in the History of Biology - 2008 Topic: Embryos in Historical Context

Directors: John Beatty, James Collins, and Jane Maienschein

This is an intensive, one-week seminar with annually varying topics. It is designed for advanced graduate students, younger scholars, and also more established researchers in biology and the history and philosophy of biology.

Summer Program in Neuroscience, Ethics, & Survival (SPINES)

Directors: Joe L. Martinez, and James Townsel
This program provides a rich experience in neuroscience. In the first month students are exposed to neuroscience laboratory techniques, contemporary neuroscience research in seminar and lecture formats; in ethics using case studies; in survival skills such as grant writing, teaching, and public speaking, using a lecture and workshop formats. In a second optional month the students work full time in a research laboratory at the MBL.  The program is targeted to groups underrepresented in neuroscience to increase the probability of professional success, although applications from any qualified student who is interested in the SPINES curriculum are welcome.

Workshop on Molecular Evolution

Director: Michael Cummings
The Workshop on Molecular Evolution has been the finest course in the subject since it was first offered in 1988. It consists of a series of lectures, demonstrations and computer labs that cover various aspects of molecular evolution. A distinguishing feature of the workshop is a well-equipped computer laboratory for comparative analysis of molecular data. This two-week program is designed for established investigators, postdoctoral fellows, and advanced graduate students with prior experience in molecular evolution and comparative genomics.

Summer Courses
The MBL offers advanced, graduate-level courses in embryology, physiology, neurobiology, microbiology, reproduction, and parasitology for six to eight weeks each summer.