Vivek directs year 3 of the Short Course on the Impacts of Sleep and Circadian Biology on Alzheimer’s Disease and Aging
Year 3 of the R13 course was a success! Thank you to all who attended. https://www.jax.org/education-and-learning/education-calendar/2023/10-October/impacts-of-sleep-and-circadian-biology-on-alzheimers-disease-and-aging 2023_CC_Impacts of Sleep flyer v4...
Vivek organizes the 2nd ML based behavior quantification course
The second year of the course was a success. We had 20+ instructors and ~35 students attend the course from all over the world! Lots of good science and hiking. JC, Jake, and Anshul attended the course from the Kumar Lab. JC was also a TA with Brian....
Kumar Lab’s work featured in news article in Nature
Our work on advanced phenotyping was mentioned in a news article in Nature. d41586-023-01926-w (1)
Presentations at the Complex Trait Community 2023 Conference
Gautam, Brian, Jaycee, and Vivek gave oral presentations of their work at this year's CTC meeting in a session called "Machine learning for rodent behavior". https://complextrait.org/meetings/ctc-rg2023/program.html Talk Titles: A machine-vision-based frailty index...
Lab hike to Hadlock Falls
Had a great time on our stroll to Hadlock Falls! Some blueberries were obtained and the water felt...
Lab Stroll for blueberries and reptiles
Brian led the lab in search of blueberries and found a snake. It's a smooth green snake. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smooth_green_snake Everyone got to pose with the non-venomous snake. [gallery...
2023 Pirate Golf and BBQ
The lab celebrated the summer with our annual pirate golf and BBQ. It was also Sandeep's last day in the lab. This is the 6th (or 7th) year of Pirate Golf.
Jaycee and Vivek attend the Tufts Genetics Retreat
Jaycee and Vivek attended the Tufts Genetics Retreat in Freeport, Maine. Jaycee presented a poster and got second place. Great job Jaycee!
Jaycee passes her qualifying exam
Jaycee, who is part of the Tufts Genetics Program, passed her qualifying exam with flying colors. Nice job Jaycee, you are now an official PhD Candidate. We thank her committee (Dr. Beth Dumont, Greg Carter, Donna Slonim, and program representative Dr. Chris Baker)...
Tom celebrates 25 years at JAX
Tom Sproule celebrated 25 years at JAX. Tom has been in the Kumar Lab since 2017 as an RA III. Congratulations Tom on this great accomplishment and the leadership you have shown in the lab. The milk cake was made by Marina (recipe to follow...maybe). It was...
Vivek and Jake attend NIDA Genetics and Epigenetics Cross-Cutting Research Team Meeting
The NIDA Genetics meeting was held on the main campus (Natcher Center). It was our first in person meeting in a couple of years. Jake presented a poster on the pain work. It was good to see many colleagues. ...
Lab Hike #5
We hiked with the lab visitor, Stef Puig. Brian led the hike around Long Pond....
Lab Visit from Dr. Stephanie Puig from Boston Univeristy
Dr. Puig visited the lab for a collaboration on chronic pain models. She will be collaborating with Jake in the lab to use computer vision for pain assays. Dr. Puig gave Friday's Genetic Interest Group seminar.
Yan Dong Visit and Lab Hike #4
Dr. Yan Dong was Vivek's Thursday seminar guest. Dr. Dong visited from the University of Pittsburgh. He gave an excellent seminar on the neurobiology of addiction. We hiked Gorham Mountain. ...
Vivek gives a seminar at University of Texas-Houston
Vivek visited and gave a seminar in the Univeristy of Texas-Houston Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Dr. Seung Hee Yoo hosted Vivek. It was a fun visit to a great department. Houston was heavily affected by Hurricane Harvey. Here is a flood gate...
Vivek organizes the 2nd course on IMPACTS OF SLEEP AND CIRCADIAN BIOLOGY ON ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE AND AGING
'The second year of the course was held at JAX on Oct 17-20 and brought together speakers and students ~40. [gallery columns="4"...
ML-Behavior Workshop
Vivek co-organized THE SHORT COURSE ON THE APPLICATION OF MACHINE LEARNING FOR AUTOMATED QUANTIFICATION OF BEHAVIOR at High Seas on Oct. 2022. Brian and Leinani ran a workshop and attended the course. [gallery columns="4"...
Vivek presents lab research at UTHSC
Vivek was invited by the graduate students of the UTHSC Neuroscience Program. He met with several colleagues and met new students. His talk focused on the use of computer vision for preclinical models of psychiatric disease.
Vivek presents poster at Gordon Research Conference on the Neurobiology of Addiction
Vivek attended the GRC on addiction at Newry, Maine. The conference consisted of ~200 neuroscientists.
Yehya passes their qualifying exam.
Yehya passed their quals in June 2022. Congratulations on becoming an official PhD candidate.
Kumar Lab organizes a symposium on Machine Learning and Behavior Quantification at IBANGS
The International Brain and Neural Genetics Society organized its 23rd Annual Genes, Brain & Behavior Meeting on May 23rd-27th, 2022 in Memphis at the UTHSC. The meeting was hybrid with over 100 participants. Vivek organized a symposium titled Behavior...
Tufts Genetics and Neuro PhD Students Meet at JAX for a Retreat
Tufts students in the Genetics and Neuroscience programs joined together on April 11 - April 13 in the annual effort to facilitate community between the Boston-based and Bar Harbor-based students. The three-day retreat featured student-talk sessions, student-poster...
Vivek attends the SFARI Investigator Meeting in New York
Vivek attended the SFARI Investigator's meeting on April 11-13 in NYC. The meeting booklet is here. The meeting had ~200 investigators with a wide array of topics from human genetics to systems...
Spectrum Magazine covers our gait/posture methods
Spectrum is a leading online magazine for autism research and treatment. Holly Barker from Spectrum interviewed Vivek and wrote this piece about our Cell Reports paper. ...
Kumar Lab Receives a 2021 SFARI Director’s Award
Press announcement here - the work will fund monitoring of ASD models using our long-term methods. We appreciate the support from SFARI (Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative) which is one of the most innovative funding agencies for biomedical research....
Gait and posture paper is now online at Cell Reports
A tour de force from Keith and Gautam. This is beautiful work. Full text is available here. https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(21)01740-X
Two new Kumar Lab members join
Michelle Berger and Marina Santos have joined the Kumar Lab as Research Associates. More to come on their background and roles in the lab. WELCOME MARINA AND MICHELLE
Summary of our nociception work
A nice summary of our nociception paper by Janine. https://www.mousephenotype.org/news/jax-researchers-develop-new-automated-system-for-recording-pain-behaviour-in-mice/...
Sleep paper is now published online
The article can be found here. Standard link (you may share this link anywhere): https://academic.oup.com/sleep/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/sleep/zsab260/6414386 Free-access link (see below for how you may use this link):...
Vivek Co-organizes Sleep/Circadian/AD Short Course at Highseas
Vivek was a co-organizer of the Impacts of Sleep and Circadian Biology on Alzheimer's Disease and Aging from Oct 16-22, 2021 at Highseas Conference Center. The short course had 25 residential students and over 100 virtual students. The instructors included leaders...
Gait Paper is accepted to Cell Reports
The mouse gait paper has been accepted. A preprint is here - the final version will be shorter due to space limitations from the Journal. Congratulations to Keith and Gautam on leading this effort. The work was started by Justin Gardin, a stellar postdoc in the...
Visual determination of frailty – preprint online now
Leinani's and Gautam's paper is online as a preprint. It is currently under review at Nature Aging.
Sleep Paper is accepted
Visual determination of sleep states is accepted in the journal Sleep. Congratulations to Brian and Mandy for leading this effort.
Press Release for two new grants for the lab
We received two new grants. The press release is here. We are looking for additional lab members. https://www.jax.org/news-and-insights/2021/september/untangling-the-biology-of-addiction
eLife Digest of the grooming paper
Very well written summary of our work in eLife. https://elifesciences.org/digests/63207/lights-camera-action
Updated paper: Gait analysis
An updated version of Gait analysis paper is on Biorxiv. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.29.424780v2 It has new analysis from Keith Sheppard and Gautam Sabnis including several new figures in the supplement. We look forward to getting reviews...
Grooming paper is published in eLife
Paper link is here https://elifesciences.org/articles/63207 Data associated with the paper is here with video data uploaded to Zenodo https://zenodo.org/record/4646088 We also share some videos of our network in action:...
Kumar Lab receives a new grant from NIDA
The Kumar Lab received a grant from NIDA to build new models of addiction. The press release is here https://www.jax.org/news-and-insights/2020/july/building-better-mouse-models-for-addiction-research The project summary is available here: PROJECT SUMMARY Addiction...
Kumar Lab hosts Dr. Eric Yttri for a virtual visit
Dr. Yttri, from Carnegie Mellon University, Department of Biological Sciences, presented his lab's latest work from this paper. The paper uses unsupervised learning to understand the types of behaviors mice carry out. Dr. Yttri met with postdocs, engineers, and...
Circadian and Sleep Research Support by NIH
I was part of a special emphasis study section last week titled - "Circadian Patterns of Gene Expression Associated with Disease" for RFA-HL-20-016. The RFA was sponsored by NHLBI and NIDA, so most of the proposals revolved around priorities of these two ICs. ...
Vivek attends the 2020 NIDA genetics consortium meeting
Vivek and Arojit attended the NIDA genetics meeting in Bethesda, MD. They presented two posters. Vivek presented our work on cloning of a mutation that regulates cocaine responses. This is a new gene that has not been linked to cocaine responses. Abstract from the...
Vivek gives lecture at Dartmouth
Vivek was invited to give a seminar at Dartmouth University by Dr. Gio Bosco and his postdoctoral fellow Shiva Sathyanarayana. Vivek spoke about the lab's work on Cyfip2 (work of postdoctoral Arojit Mitra, Kyungin Kim, and others). He also spoke about the lab's...
Vivek talks about addiction on WVOM radio in Bangor
Vivek was on the Ric Tyler and George Hale show https://www.wvomfm.com/episode/ghrt-rewind-07-17-kumar-jax-lab-addiction-research-1100/
Vivek Speaks at the Causeway Club on MDI
Vivek gave a lecture on the genetics of addiction at the Causeway Club on behalf of Acadia Family Center. The talk was attended by approximately 50 people. Dr. Dick Dimond also gave a talk preceding Vivek's talk.
Vivek presents at the 2019 Complex Trait Consortium Meeting
Vivek attended and presented at the CTC meeting in UCSD. The CTC meeting is an annual meeting of complex trait geneticists who use model organisms. Vivek spoke on the use of computer vision to extract heritable ethological endophenotypes from mice. The meeting has...
Press Article on Dr. Kumar and Dr. Chesler
https://www.jax.org/news-and-insights/2019/may/jax-scientists-speak-out-on-the-crisis-of-opioid-addiction
Arojit’s paper demonstrating that TMOD2 is a regulator of cocaine responses is on Biorxiv.
The paper is currently under review and we hope it is published soon. Meanwhile, the preprint is available here. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/648295v1
Vivek speaks at MDIBL on an opioid crisis panel
MDIBL hosted a meeting of researchers on the opioid crisis in Maine. The panel is part of the 46th Maine Biological and Medical Sciences Symposium (MBMSS), an annual statewide gathering at which students and scientists have the opportunity to network, collaborate,...
Vivek gives a talk at the Discovery Museum in Bridgeport, CT
Vivek gave a talk on the genetics and neuroscience of addiction at the Discovery Museum in Bridgeport, CT. The talk was attended by several dozen museum attendees and organized by JAX government outreach folks. Vivek also met with Connecticut State Representative,...
Brian’s tracking paper published
Brian's paper on robust mouse tracking is published. This paper describes how to track mice in complicated environments. Sean and others contributed to this paper. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-019-0362-1 Data from the paper is here. [button...
Vivek speaks at the 2019 Maine State Science Fair
Vivek spoke about addiction genetics and neuroscience to high schools students from across the state of Maine. Over 200 students competed in over a dozen categories in this year's science fair. More information about the event is here. Arojit Mitra was...
Vivek gives Maine Engineering Expo Keynote Address
Vivek presents the keynote address at the Maine Engineering Expo. Approximately 150 people attended the banquet. National Engineers Week was initiated to publicly promote the work and contributions of our nation's engineers. During this week, engineering...
Brian’s video compression tests
Visual examples of some of the compression tests. Original sub-panel of video and differences between original and compressed frames. Difference previews are amplified 2x to enhance visibility. Video Acquisition Imaging Hardware All data was acquired using the same...
Lab Lunch May 2017 to celebrate Graduation.
The lab celebrated the end of the school year with a lunch at Side Street Cafe. Congratulations to Kai, who is off to Stanford in the fall. Congratulations to Alden, who is off to University of Massachusetts, Amherst in the fall. A big thanks to Megan McOsker from...
Vivek’s Op-Ed in the Ellsworth American about neurobiology of opioids
In this piece in the Ellsworth American, Vivek discussed what leads to opioid overdose and why those in recovery are at greater risk of...
Kumar lab profiled in the Ellsworth American
The lab was profiled in the Ellsworth American where Vivek discussed treating addiction like a chronic disease.
Lab Hike to Precipice
We hiked the Precipice Trail, a non-technical climb inside Acadia National Park!
Vivek apperas on Love Maine Radio Show in Portland Maine
https://www.themainemag.com/radio/radio-guests/dr-elissa-chesler-dr-vivek-kumar/
Op-ed on addiction published in the Portland Press Herald
Vivek published an Oped in the Portland Press Herald that argues that addiction is a chronic disease....
