Yang Tan Collective

...all while becoming a mother during her PhD journey. An extraordinary achievement and an exciting new chapter ahead! @still_francesca

Congrats, Dr. Francesca Riccio-Ackerman!🎓 We're so proud of Francesca for completing her doctoral work in the K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics at MIT where she focused on strengthening Sierra Leone’s prosthetics and orthotics sector and expanding access to high-quality care...⬇️

“There are aspects of thinking that seem to go beyond some of the limitations of language,” says Hope Kean. Read more about the study: 🔗 Article: yangtan.mit.edu/news-stories/s… 📚 Study: pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…

Does logical reasoning require language? According to new research from @ev_fedorenko, @HopeKean, and collaborating neuroscientists, study participants were able to solve various complex logic games and puzzles without language, showing that: no, language is not necessary. ⬇️

🔗 Read more: cam.ac.uk/research/news/…

The Yang Tan Collective is excited to welcome and collaborate with the newly announced K. Lisa Yang Centre for Autism Research at Cambridge, which was established to support autism research aimed at improving the health and well-being of autistic people and their families!

While it is not clear yet how these regions contribute to language processing, researchers have been making headway “toward determining the functions of the cerebellar regions that they identified.” Read more here: news.mit.edu/2026/brain-lan…

Evelina Fedorenko and her team, including Aaron Wright, a Yang Post-Bacc scholar, have analyzed fMRI data from 700+ people and discovered that language processing may occur in 17 additional regions of the brain, not just in the left hemisphere of the brain 🧠💬 ⬇️

🔗 Hock E. Tan was born in Penang, Malaysia, came to the US to study at MIT, and is currently the president and CEO of Broadcom. Read his profile here: carnegie.org/great-immigran…

Congratulations to Hock E. Tan, co-founder of the Yang Tan Collective, for being honored as part of The Andrew Carnegie Foundation @ACarnegieFdn's 2026 Class of Great Immigrants, Great Americans! 🇺🇸 🎉 Congrats to him and all the honorees 👏 #YangTanCollective #GreatImmigrants

Event free with RSVP: pioneerworks.org/programs/body-…

🗓️Don't miss "Body Alchemy" at @PioneerWorks_ in Brooklyn on 7/19, feat @hughherr & @anarajcevic from the Yang Center for Bionics. This event will explore how breakthroughs in bionics, neural interfaces, and embodied design are redefining the future of the human body. RSVP ⬇️

Hock Tan (co-founder of the Yang Tan Collective) and @zhangf (co-director of the K. Lisa Yang and Hock E. Tan Center for Molecular Therapeutics in Neuroscience) were both featured on the #Forbes250 America’s Most Successful Living Immigrants list! 🔗 forbes.com/sites/alexknap…

Congratulations to Carolina Warneryd and Duncan Lee of the K. Lisa Yang Center for Bionics on their success at the 2026 MIT Mechanical Engineering De Florez Awards! 👏👏 🔗 media.mit.edu/posts/two-biom…

Frontiers for Young Minds is an open-access scientific journal for kids. Read it here: 🔗 kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.33…

In a new @FrontYoungMinds article, Y. Eva Tan Professor @eboyden3 explains optogenetics 🔆🧠 This article was edited with young reviewers, Elizabeth (age 13) and Klara (age 13), who provided feedback to ensure their peers and young audiences could understand the article. ⬇️

Congratulations to Yang ICoN fellow Andrea de Varda @devarda_a, who has been named a winner of the prestigious Glushko Dissertation Prize! 👏👏 🔗 cognitivesciencesociety.org/glushko-disser… @cogsci_soc

(2/2) The symposium also showcased the next generation of researchers, with a dozen trainees presenting their innovative work during a lively poster session. 📸 Ila Fiete, MIT; Fenna Krienen, Princeton University; attendees during break

(1/2) More than 150 scientists attended the 2026 Yang ICoN Center Symposium hosted by Ila Fiete on May 21. Eight leading faculty shared insights on how neural structure and function emerge during development, spanning both experimental and theoretical perspectives.

(2/2) These findings are reshaping our understanding of human immunity’s ancient origins and revealing a vast reservoir of biological strategies refined through billions of years of evolution. science.org/content/articl…

(1/2) A fascinating @ScienceMagazine feature highlights the breadth of newly identified bacterial defense systems, including groundbreaking work from the Yang Tan Collective led by Feng Zhang. ⬇️