Meetings & Courses Program

Crossroads of Biology

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Advanced Techniques in Molecular Neuroscience
June 25 - July 11, 2026

Key Dates
Application Deadline: March 27th, 2026 CLOSED
Arrival: June 25th by 6pm EST
Departure: July 11th around 12pm EST

The 2026 Advanced Techniques in Molecular Neuroscience Course is no longer taking applications.


CSHL courses are intensive, running all day and often including evenings and weekends; students are expected to attend all sessions and reside on campus for the duration of the course.

Instructors
Anne Schaefer, Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital
Debra L. Silver, Duke University Medical Center

Assistant Instructor
Alexandria Battison, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY

See the roll of honor - who's taken the course in the past.

This laboratory and lecture course is designed to provide neuroscientists at all levels with a conceptual and practical understanding of several of the most advanced techniques in molecular neuroscience.

The course curriculum is divided into three sections: an extensive and up-to-date set of laboratory exercises, daily lectures covering the theoretical and practical aspects of the various methods used in the laboratory, and a series of evening research seminars.

The informal and interactive evening lectures will be given by leading molecular neuroscientists and will serve to illustrate the ways in which the various experimental approaches have been used to advance specific areas of neurobiology.

In this year's course, the laboratory portion will include topics such as:

  • Assessment of open chromatin in specified neural populations by ATAC-seq

  • Assays of mRNA expression in specified neural subtypes by TRAP

  • Introduction to overall strategies, use and design of BAC transgenic vectors

  • Methods for preparing purified cell cultures of defined neuronal and glial cells

  • Preparation methods, isolation and analysis of proteins for proteomics

  • Preparation and stereotaxic delivery of lentiviral vectors

  • Identification of nuclear factor binding sites in brain by Cut & Run

  • Tissue clearing

  • CRISPR genome editing and construction of CRISPR vectors for targeting genes in neurons and glia

  • Gene delivery to neural cells in vivo by viral infection and plasmid electroporation techniques

  • Expansion Microscopy

  • Multiphoton Microscopy Theory and Practice for Neuroscience

  • Spatial Transcriptomics using MERFISH

  • Bioinformaticanalysis workshops for transcriptomics, epigenetics, and proteomics data

2026 Lecturers & Module Leaders Included:
Pinar Ayata, CUNY Advanced Science Research Center, New York, NY 
Jeremy Borniger, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY 
James Eberwine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 
Travis Faust, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 
Bruno Gegenhuber, Harvard Medical School, Boston, United States 
Leslie Griffith, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 
Kurt Haas, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada 
Sinisa Hrvatin, Whitehead Institute/MIT, Cambridge, MA 
Martin Kampmann, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 
Paul Kenny, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY 
Cary Lai, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 
Shane Liddelow, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY 
Jeffrey Moffitt, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA 
Tomasz Nowakowski, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 
Indigo Rose, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 
Kelly Sakaki, JRC HHMI, Virginia, VA 
Dorothy Schafer, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, Upton, MA 
Eric Schmidt, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY 
Kunal Shroff, UCSF, San Francisco, CA 
Scott Soderling, Duke University, Durham, NC 
Tychele Turner, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 
Michael Williams, Michigan State University, Grand Rapids, MI 



The CSHL Meetings & Courses Program is strongly committed to diversity in the recruitment and selection of participants for all our courses. See our diversity policy here. We strongly encourage individuals from diverse backgrounds to apply for this course.

Support & Stipends:

We anticipate major support provided by: National Institute of Mental Health.

We would like to acknowledge the following companies that provided invaluable support:
Coherent Corp, Leica Microsystems, Light Conversion-USA, Nikon Instruments, and ThorLabs

Stipends are available to offset tuition costs as follows-

        

Please indicate your eligibility for funding in your stipend request submitted when you apply to the course. Stipend requests do not affect selection decisions made by the instructors.

Cost (including board and lodging): $5,300 USD

No fees are due until you have completed the full application process and are accepted into the course. 

Before applying, ensure you have:

  1. Personal statement/essay;
  2. Letter(s) of recommendation;
  3. Curriculum vitae/resume (optional);
  4. Financial aid request (optional).
    More details.

If you are not ready to fully apply but wish to express interest in applying, receive a reminder two weeks prior to the deadline, and tell us about your financial aid requirements, click below: