What is consciousness, exactly? Does the brain create it? Or is a spiritual phenomenon that can't be reduced to matter? In most of human history, these kinds of questions were studied solely by philosophers. But in the last two decades, the question of consciousness has reached the fields of neuroscience and even physics. In this PubScience, we will consider why consciousness is so interesting...

Roy Kishony is the Marilyn and Henry Taub Professor of Life Sciences, the director of the Lorry I. Lokey Interdisciplinary Center for Life Sciences and Engineering, and a Faculty of Biology. Combining novel quantitative experimental techniques and clinical studies with mathematical modeling and advanced data analysis, Kishony's lab is studying microbial evolution with a specific focus on...

Jane Parker studies resistance pathway dynamics in plant immunity at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. She is also an associate professor at the Institute of Genetics University of Cologne. Current Projects in the lab are host intracellular pathogen recognition and mobilization of resistance pathways, steering the plant stress hormone network in effector-triggered immunity. and plant immunity...

Jim Kronstad is a professor in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology and is a member of the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Washington and now studies several aspects of fungal biology including pathogenesis, morphogenesis, infection-specific gene expression and self versus nonself recognition (mating).