GUIS: Yael Niv

Dear all,

Join us in the first Growing Up in Science event of 2019! This time we will interview a superstar scientist that has travelled all the way from New York to Nijmegen especially for this GUIS event. And because she’s here anyway, she’ll also give the Donders Lecture the day before ;-). Here are the specs:

Who: Prof. Yael Niv, Princeton University, Rutgers-Princeton Center for Computational Neuropsychiatry
When: Friday February 15, 15:00 -16.00h
Where: Red Room, Trigon building

In earlier versions, we heard from senior scientists at the Donders Institute about their winding career paths and life's flukes and decisions as well as a Nature journal editor. But how is academic life outside of the Donders? As a teaser trailer, here’s the “official” story of Yael’s career:

Yael received her cross-disciplinary B.A. with a focus on computational neuroscience in 1999, and received her M.A. (summa cum laude) with a thesis combining psychology and computer science in 2001, from Tel-Aviv University. She obtained her PhD (also summa cum laude!) from UCL and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2007. She then worked as a post-doc at Princeton University, where she is now a full professor.

Yael is not only an excellent researcher, but also a great mentor (she has been awarded the Princeton Graduate Mentoring Award https://psych.princeton.edu/news/niv-receives-graduate-mentoring-award), and an advocate for gender equality in academia (she co-founded https://biaswatchneuro.com).

Curious what things are like behind the scenes for someone with such a successful scientific career? What is her life like besides all the awesome science? Do you want to know how she balances this with a partner who is also a scientist, even in the same field, and how struggled with solving a 2-body problem when moving from London (where they met) to the US, and then a 4-body problem when they had small kids in a small apartment in New York?  And does someone stellar enough to give Donders Lectures, ever doubt herself?

Come join us, so you can find out for yourself!

As always, you are very welcome (and encouraged!) to ask questions during the event, but if you feel a little shy to do so, please send questions you have in advance to Monja (m.frobose@donders.ru.nl). These questions will be anonymized and asked by the moderators.

After the GUIS event, we will celebrate together with drinks in the DCCN canteen, where you are all very welcome!

Looking forward to see you there,

Alan, Hanneke, Monja & Patricia (Our newest member!)

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