Join the Allen Institute and Circuit Neuroscience Basel for the Lake Conference in Seattle, Washington this October. Comparative and Evolutionary Neurobiology will be a 3.5 day forum discussing emerging technologies, topics and views in comparative and evolutionary approaches to understand nervous system function.

The scientific program will include about 30 talks by invited speakers, short talks selected from participant abstracts, and two poster sessions. The conference will cover a range of topics from evolutionary concepts and frameworks to comparative genomics and genetics, conserved and specialized evolutionary and developmental mechanisms, and evolutionary neuroscience systems biology.

Organizers

• Detlev Arendt
• Trygve Bakken
• Pico Caroni
• Evan Eichler
• Alex Pollen
• Barbara Treutlein
• Vanessa Ruta
• Michael Yartsev
• Ed Lein

Application Details

We invite applicants at all career stages to apply to attend. In addition to speaker presentations, we will feature a number of short talks and posters from accepted applicants. Application deadline: Friday, June 5, 2026.

All applicants will be notified of the decision on their applications in July.

Registration Cost

The conference registration fee is $650 USD for a general ticket and $550 for students, to be paid only by accepted applicants after notification. Application is free. Registration included:

• Three days of conference sessions
• Welcome reception (Sunday, 10/25) & evening event (Wednesday, 10/28)
• All meals provided during the conference

Please contact lakeconference@alleninstitute.org with questions.

Venue

The conference took place at the Hyatt Regency Lake Washington hotel in Renton, WA. Located on the south shores of Lake Washington, the Hyatt Regency combines modern meeting spaces and guest rooms with unparalleled access to the beauty of the Pacific Northwest.

The hotel is a convenient 10 minutes from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and just 20 minutes from downtown Seattle. The hotel can be reached by public transport, taxis, sea plane and kayak!

Accepted applicants received additional travel and accommodation details in advance of the event.

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• Alex Pollen, University of California, San Franscisco
• Azahara Oliva Gonzalez, Cornell University
• Barbara Treutlein, ETH Zürich
• Bing Brunton, University of Washington
• Bing Su, Kunming Institute of Zoology
• Christopher Lowe, Stanford University
• Claude Desplan, New York University
• Daniel Kronauer, Rockefeller University
• David Keays, University of Cambridge
• Detlev Arendt, EMBL Heidelberg
• Erich Jarvis, Rockefeller University
• Evan Eichler, University of Washington
• Franck Polleux, Columbia University
• Genevieve Konopka, University of California, Los Angeles
• Gilles Laurent, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research
• Henrik Kaessmann, Heidelberg University (ZMBH)
• Jacob Musser, Yale University
• Jennifer Li, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics
• Kathleen Millen, Seattle Children’s Hospital
• Lauren O’Connell, Stanford
• Lindy McBride, Princeton
• Madeleine Lancaster, University of Cambridge
• Maria Tosches, Columbia University
• Nate Sawtell, Columbia University
• Oliver Hobert,  Columbia University
• Paul Cisek, University of Montreal
• Pawel Burkhardt, University of Bergen
• Pierre Vanderhaegen, KU Leuven
• Stein Aerts, KU Leuven/ VIB.AI
• Trygve Bakken, Allen Institute
• Vanessa Ruta, Rockefeller University