While interesting (especially from a funding perspective!), most of these approaches aren't quite as ground-breaking as one might think. Neuroscientists in academia <i>are</i> doing most of these things. For optogenetics, see Deisseroth's work; for in vivo Ca2+ imaging in nematodes, refer to the work of Bargmann as well as the various Witesides collaborations involving microfluidics; pan-neuronal in vivo imaging is currently being pioneered by Engert at Harvard and a couple of Janelia Farm labs.<p>These are massive efforts, and involve horrendous heaps of diligent busywork. This makes me the boring naysayer, but please don't be distracted by the startup-like appearance and the peculiar financing situation. It's possible but unlikely that the major obstacle here is simply the combination of available techniques!<p>Honestly, what I'm most curious about are his thoughts on model-driven interrogation of an in vivo system -- biologists, and even computational neuroscientists, are a bit too hesitant when it comes to letting computers find and test hypotheses. In the age of highly advanced genetic techniques (e.g., binary expression systems in Drosophila or zebrafish) and 2-photon imaging, the process of actually evaluating hypotheses has become a bit old-fashioned...
I love the internship application page <a href="http://nemaload.davidad.org/jobs" rel="nofollow">http://nemaload.davidad.org/jobs</a>. The author does expect any candidate to be perfect before meeting, but sets out a small set of criteria for any potential candidate to research.<p>Probably in the process of researching any of these topics a potential intern would gain a good understanding of the upcoming internship.<p>Sometimes I wish job interviews were laid out like this.
Sounds really interesting. You could try to secure additional funding for this project via Microryza (<a href="http://www.microryza.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.microryza.com/</a>), which is a kickstarter for scientific research.
This isn't directly related, but he enrolled in an MIT graduate program at the age of <i>14</i>? That's incredible.<p>I would love to see how this project progresses. It has fascinating implications for artificial intelligence and singularity.
The about page [1] is very interesting. "3. Providing a foundation for uploading research .... If it can be done for a worm, the next steps are to attempt a zebrafish, then a fruit fly, then a honeybee, then a mouse, then a dog, then a macaque monkey, then a chimpanzee, and, ultimately, a human. " -- that really fascinate me.<p>Isn't that awesome? But ... "the philosophical assumptions fail, and human immortality through uploading is fundamentally impossible".<p>Could anybody explain this a little bit?<p>[1] <a href="http://nemaload.davidad.org/about" rel="nofollow">http://nemaload.davidad.org/about</a>
Interesting .. although a similar project already exists (<a href="http://www.openworm.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.openworm.org/</a>), and is, from a cursory glance, much more developed.
So its not just 'simulate', its more like 'virtualise'. They want to examine neurons in a real worm in real time and then model that. You know all those sci-fi books where people upload their minds into software? This worm is going to get there first. Hope they give it somewhere nice to virtually live.
Oooh Exciting stuff! I've been following openworm off and on for a while now. The projects should be extremely complementary. I hope they communicate.<p>(This projects is going to collect a totally new dataset)
I like the "optional" hands-on challenges he listed for applicants in the jobs page. It may end up filtering out some talented candidates (not wanting to put in this much effort for one application), but it will certainly call out to the tinkerers and hobbyists who would do those tasks for fun anyway.