Café Sci: Lights, Camera, Action; How the 2026 Nobel Prize is Changing our Understanding of the Brain and Behavior

Eric Yttri takes the stage at the Kamin Science Center on Monday, November 2, for a Café Sci talk titled Lights, Camera, Action: How the 2026 Nobel Prize is Changing our Understanding of the Brain and Behavior. The whole evening runs from 7 to 9 PM, and it's open to all ages.

The talk centers on the 2026 Nobel Prize in neuroscience, which went to the discovery of a light-sensitive protein found in pond algae. That one discovery made optogenetics possible: a technique that lets scientists turn specific neural populations on or off with a flash of light and millisecond accuracy. It's a high-precision tool for poking at the brain and seeing exactly what happens when you flip a switch.

Yttri, an associate professor of biological science at Carnegie Mellon, works right at the intersection of neuroscience, machine learning, and bioengineering. He'll explain how he pairs optogenetics with machine learning to watch videos of animals and identify their distinct actions on their own, rather than having a human label them by hand. It's a way of letting the data speak for itself about how an animal is actually moving and behaving.

He's published in Nature, Neuron, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and his work has been featured on CNN, WESA Pittsburgh, and NPR's Weekend Edition. The lecture is part of the Kamin Science Center's Café Sci adult series, and it's followed by a Q&A session, so you can ask your own questions once he's done. You can attend in person at the Daniel G. and Carole L. Kamin Science Center, 1 Allegheny Ave, or stream it virtually if you can't make it downtown. It's free, but you'll need to preregister.