The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is a widely used model in neuroscience due to its relatively small brain, which is easier to study than those of larger animals. Despite its size, the Drosophila brain is capable of forming memories, learning, and engaging in sophisticated social behaviours. Remarkably, fruit flies perform calculations as complex as vertebrates, but with a brain that has far fewer neurons. They share about 60% of their genes with humans, and 75% of human genetic diseases have parallels in flies.

Offer Description

The Chiappe Lab at the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme (ChiappeLab.org) is seeking for a Research Assistant to join the team. The Research Assistant is responsible for supervising and executing both technical and administrative tasks on a day-to-day basis to support the lab's research and operational requirements.

This congress reaffirmed the collaboration between the two countries in the research and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, a condition with a higher incidence in aging societies like those of Spain and Portugal, and with a profound economic and social impact.

Host

Francesco Costantino, PhD Student, Champalimaud Research

Venue

Seminar room

How do we learn to make sense of our environment? Over time, our brain builds a hierarchy of knowledge, with higher-order concepts linked to the lower-order features that comprise them. For instance, we learn that cabinets contain drawers and that Dalmatian dogs have black-and-white patches, and not vice versa. This interconnected framework shapes our expectations and perception of the world, allowing us to identify what we see based on context and experience.

Co-organised by Fundación CIEN, Fundación Reina Sofía, and the Champalimaud Foundation, this scientific congress aims to bring advances in research in the fight against Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases to the public, and above all, to raise awareness to advance the search for global solutions and responses due to their social consequences.

Now, Megan Carey from the Champalimaud Foundation (CF), Mónica Sousa from the Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde (i3S), Ricardo Henriques from the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC), and Rui Oliveira from IGC and the Instituto Universitário de Ciências Psicológicas Sociais e da Vida (ISPA), become EMBO Mem

The images created during the daily scientific and medical endeavours at the Champalimaud Foundation can be as beautiful and compelling as any work of art. To the untrained eye, these images might also appear baffling, but, if you know what you’re looking at, they may just reveal information that can spark discoveries, contribute to the improvement of patient quality of life and maybe even alter our understanding of reality.

The images created during the daily scientific and medical endeavours at the Champalimaud Foundation can be as beautiful and compelling as any work of art. To the untrained eye, these images might also appear baffling, but, if you know what you’re looking at, they may just reveal information that can spark discoveries, contribute to the improvement of patient quality of life and maybe even alter our understanding of reality.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a spectacular tool that has been in development for the last decades; its role in our lives is already pervasive and will inevitably grow; and, most importantly, we can, through regulation, avoid its abuses (such as fake news and the manipulation of human beings). Indeed, whatever the future of AI is to be, we have the power to choose – wisely – to use it for the common good.