It's Paris, It's Mecca, It's a Dream. Former students wax poetic when they reflect on their MBL days. Download a complete 2011 Course Schedule

2011 Special Topics Courses

Analytical & Quantitative Light Microscopy

Directors: Greenfield Sluder, Jason Swedlow, and DavidWolf
A comprehensive and intensive course in light microscopy for researchers in biology, medicine, and material sciences. This course provides an in-depth examination of the theory of image formation and application of video methods for exploring subtle interactions between light and the specimen.

Biology of the Inner Ear: Experimental and Analytical Approaches
Directors: Jeffrey T. Corwin , and Jeffrey R. Holt
The Biology of the Inner Ear (BIE) course has adapted the intensive and focused approach that typifies MBL courses to provide students with the capacity to address important problems in auditory and vestibular research. Students with backgrounds in biological and physical/computational sciences and scientists new to investigations of the inner ear are particularly encouraged to apply.

BioMedical Informatics

Directors: James Cimino, and Joyce Mitchell

Principal Investigator: Cathy Norton
This week-long survey course is designed to familiarize individuals with the application of computer technologies and information science in medicine. Through a combination of lectures and hands-on computer exercises, participants will be introduced to the conceptual and technical components of medical informatics.

Computational Image Analysis in Cellular and Developmental Biology
Directors: Gaudenz Danuser, Khuloud Jaqaman, Steve Altschuler, Lani Wu
This 10 day course offers theory and hands-on training in the design and implementation of image processing software required for the quantitative and mechanistic analysis of light microscopy data in cellular and developmental biology. An additional subject in the course will be software design, addressing both the implementation of optimized algorithms and sharable code, including programming in teams.

Frontiers in Stem Cells & Regeneration
Directors: Ken Muneoka, and Gerald P. Schatten
The Stem Cells and Regeneration Course (formerly known as FrHESC) is a dynamic, evolving laboratory and lecture course that includes the complete array of biological and medical perspectives from fundamental basic biology of "stemness" and mechanisms of regeneration through evaluation of pluripotent stem cells for therapeutic benefit.

Fundamental Issues in Vision Research

Summer 2012 Directors: Mary Ann Stepp, and Theodore Wensel

A two-week lecture and laboratory course, experimentally based and problem oriented, intended for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in the early stages of vision research or planning to enter the field.  Students are presented with a comprehensive overview of current research areas and approaches that will help to broaden their understanding of this area.

Gene Regulatory Networks for Development
Directors: EricDavidson , and David McClay
A 10-day course comprised of morning lectures followed by workshop discussions; afternoon computer practicals leading to student projects; and wet lab demonstrations of gene regulatory perturbation analysis in vivo.

Methods in Computational Neuroscience
Directors: Adrienne Fairhall, and Michael Berry
Animals interact with a complex world, encountering a wide variety of challenges: they must gather data about the environment, discover useful structures in these data, store and recall information about past events, plan and guide actions, learn the consequences of these actions, etc. These are, in part, computational problems that are solved by networks of neurons, from roughly 100 cells in a small worm to 100 billion in humans. Careful study of the natural context for these tasks leads to new mathematical formulations of the problems that brains are solving, and these theoretical approaches in turn suggest new experiments to characterize neurons and networks. This interplay between theory and experiment is the central theme of this course.

Molecular Biology of Aging
Directors: Steven N. Austad, and GaryB.Ruvkun
A three-week lecture and laboratory course featuring the newest and most exciting ideas in aging research, with emphasis on molecular approaches. A distinguished faculty will interact with students via lecture, discussion, hands-on experiments and analysis of data.

Molecular Mycology: Current Approaches to Fungal Pathogenesis
Directors: J. Andrew Alspaugh, and Deborah A. Hogan
An intensive course designed to train advanced graduate students, post-docs, and independent investigators in different molecular methods used to study human fungal pathogens, and the models at the forefront of research on the mechanisms that underlie fungal diseases and their treatment.

Neuroinformatics
Directors: ParthaMitra , and DavidKleinfeld
The ability to digitally acquire, store and analyze large volumes of multichannel data in the neurosciences, ranging from multiple spike trains to brain images, has given rise to a new and growing body of research. This two-week course is structured around the related issues, and will contain both pedagogical lectures on the basic statistical techniques as well as focussed mini-workshops on specific neuroscience topics where applications of these techniques are critical.

NeuroStereology Workshop
Director: Mark West
The goal of the workshop is to teach research scientists how to design, supervise, and critically evaluate stereological studies of the nervous system.  Stereology is a methodology that provides meaningful quantitative descriptions of the geometry of three-dimensional structures from measurements that are made on two-dimensional images sampled from a structure of interest.

Optical Microscopy & Imaging in the Biomedical Sciences
Directors: Robert Hard , and ColinIzzard
This course is designed primarily for research scientists, physicians, postdoctoral trainees, and advanced graduate students in animal, plant, medical, and material sciences. Non-biologists seeking a comprehensive introduction to microscopy and video imaging will benefit greatly from the course. There are no prerequisites, but an understanding of the basic principles of optics is desirable.

Seminar in the History of Biology
2011 Topic: History of Cell Biology
Directors: JohnBeatty , JamesCollins , and JaneMaienschein
This is an intensive week with annually varying topics designed for a group of no more than 25 advanced graduate students, postdoctoral associates, younger scholars, and established researchers in biology, history, philosophy, and the social sciences.

Strategies and Techniques for Analyzing Microbial Population Structures
Directors: Mitchell L. Sogin and David B. Mark Welch
The rapidly expanding flow of information from next generation DNA sequencing platforms has fueled healthy debate about best practices for data analysis while at the same time building a user demand for tools that can address important questions in microbial ecology. The STAMPS course consists of lectures by experts in the analysis of molecular datasets and hands-on tutorials in use of computational packages by their designers, and emphasizes discussion and the exchange of ideas between faculty and students. The course serves graduate students, postdoctoral students and established faculty from around the world.

Summer Program in Neuroscience, Ethics, & Survival (SPINES)
Directors: Keith Trujillo, and JamesTownsel
The Summer Program in Neuroscience, Ethics & Survival (SPINES) provides a rich experience in neuroscience. The core of the program is an intensive one-month experience, in which students are exposed to neuroscience laboratory techniques, contemporary neuroscience research, ethics and survival skills (including grant writing, teaching, public speaking, and others). Lecture, lab, workshop and discussion formats are used. In a second optional month, students may apply to work full time in a research laboratory at the MBL, especially those funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. The program is targeted to groups underrepresented in neuroscience to increase the probability of professional success, although applications from any qualified students interested in the SPINES curriculum are welcome. This is a full fellowship program; all costs of attending the course, including travel, housing, and meals at MBL are covered by the National Institute of Mental Health and MBL.

Teaching About Neurobiology of Brain Dysfunction
Director: Michael Zigmond
A course designed primarily to assist faculty members to initiate or improve a course on the neurobiology of brain dysfunction for undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows at their home institutions. The course will provide a background in key neurological and psychiatric diseases, including patient presentations, a discussion of unanswered questions and of how one might design such a course, together with extensive materials to facilitate instruction, including a CD containing slides, handouts, articles of interest, and a bibliography. No clinical background will be required, but a basic knowledge of neurobiology will be assumed.

Workshop on Molecular Evolution
Directors: David Hillis, and Mitchell L. Sogin
The Workshop on Molecular Evolution at Woods Hole presents a series of lectures, discussions, and bioinformatic exercises that span contemporary topics in molecular evolution. Since its inception in 1988, the workshop has encouraged the exchange of ideas between leading theoreticians, software developers and workshop participants. The workshop serves graduate students, postdoctoral students and established faculty from around the world.

Zebrafish Development and Genetics
Directors: David Raible, and Michael Granato
An intensive two-week course for advanced graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and independent investigators that will focus on the development and genetics of zebrafish.  Participants will learn fundamental and state of the art techniques tailored to a broad range of zebrafish research through hands-on experience. Designed for participants from all areas of biology, laboratory exercises are designed to convey general principles and concepts.

Summer Courses
The MBL offers advanced, graduate-level courses in embryology, physiology, neurobiology, microbiology, reproduction, and parasitology for six to nine weeks each summer.