The Friedman Brain Institute

At the Brain Awareness Fair, attendees can meet faculty members, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai as they explore an atrium full of 30 unique brain-themed booths.

For information about the Annual Brain Awareness Fair, please contact Denise Croote, PhD, at mindatsinai@gmail.com. Mark your calendar for future Brain Awareness Week campaign dates:

• March 10-16, 2025
• March 9-15, 2026
• March 15-21, 2027
• March 13-19, 2028

Annual Brain Awareness Fair

The Friedman Brain Institute hosted its 12th Annual Brain Awareness Fair for elementary, middle, and high school students and East Harlem community members on Tuesday, March 12th at The Mount Sinai Hospital. Exhibits and activities included pipe cleaner neuron models, a 3D surgery simulator, a Meet the Experts booth featuring some of Mount Sinai's most prominent neuroscientists, and the world’s only portable, inflatable, walk-through brain exhibit. The annual brain fair is always an enormous success, with 100 Mount Sinai volunteers and over 500 participants.

Learn More about the 12th annual Brain Fair

Art of the Brain

In honor of this year’s Brain Awareness Week, The Friedman Brain Institute at Icahn Mount Sinai joins the Dana Foundation in its global efforts to increase public awareness of the progress and benefits of brain research.

The Art of the Brain is an exhibition of photographs, painting, illustrations, and videos that celebrates the beauty of the brain as seen through the eyes of some of the world’s leading researchers. With the aid of the latest technological advances, as symbolized by these images, scientists are better able to understand how the brain works and to accelerate the development of new treatments for many brain disorders including Alzheimer’s disease, autism, drug addiction, schizophrenia, and Parkinson's disease, among many others.

Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, X, Facebook, and LinkedIn at #ArtoftheBrain

If you would like to make a donation to our Art of the Brain programming through the purchase of any of the images, please contact Veronica Szarejko at veronica.szarejko@mssm.edu.

Storytelling

“Stories of the Brain and Beyond”

The Friedman Brain Institute and The Story Collider team up to bring you five true, personal stories from folks at all career stages about their journey through the brain… and beyond!

Stories surround us. Everyone has a story to tell, whether it’s about how we came to be the way we are, a challenge, a triumph, or even a catastrophe. The power of storytelling is that it makes what we have to say relatable, gives us the ability to appeal to the values of others. As scientists, we can use storytelling to communicate our passion for science, our drive, and our successes and failures to our friends and families, potential donors, study sections, and the public.

Stories of Brain and Beyond, a special Icahn Mount Sinai storytelling event in which five scientists shared true, personal stories of their scientific paths. Created through a collaboration between The Friedman Brain Institute and The Story Collider, and spearheaded by Aya Osman, PhD, and Abha K Rajbhandari, PhD, this event is performed live on-stage at Caveat, a New York City performance space. From the tragic to the hilarious, the storytellers explored the deeply human side of science. Hosts: Aya Osman, Abha Rajbhandari, and Paula Croxson

Produced by: Latasha Wright and Paula Croxson

Listen to our past “Stories of Brain and Beyond” storytellers

Meet our 2025 Storytellers

Abby Fogarty has worked for Mount Sinai for almost four years, first as a care manager for the Children's Health Home, and currently as a clinical research coordinator for a psychosis risk lab. Originally from North Carolina, Abby spends her free time romanticizing living in New York City by going for runs in Central Park, enjoying concerts and Broadway shows, and methodically hunting down the best croissant in the city.

Sabina Guliyeva is a dynamic leader with a diverse career spanning finance, international development, and research. After earning her B.B.A. in Finance from Khazar University, she spent five years in banking before making a bold career shift. She led a multimillion-dollar project at the British Council (part of the British Embassy in Azerbaijan), funded by the EU and implemented across seven countries, before earning the prestigious Civil Society Leadership Award, bringing her to Columbia University for her MS degree in 2016.

Now in New York, Sabina is a Program Manager at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, overseeing nationwide research studies. Passionate about education, she has co-taught courses on impact investing at Columbia University and to first-year medical students at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Beyond work, Sabina thrives on adventure and creativity. Trained in ballet, she is also an avid long-distance jogger and aspiring mountaineer, preparing to conquer Mount Kilimanjaro this summer. She enjoys visual and performing arts and considers cooking a fine art - often hosting friends and family with gourmet meals. Multilingual and always seeking growth, Sabina embraces every challenge with curiosity and determination.

Pablo Knobel is an environmental epidemiologist by trade and a geek by choice. Born and raised in Barcelona, he is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Mount Sinai, where he studies how the neighborhood we live in shapes our health. When he's not analyzing data or ruminating on what to do with his life, he's likely at the movies, playing board games, or complaining—sometimes even in a combination.

Akhil Kumar is a computational biologist in the lab of Dr Alex Tsankov. He is a lifelong learner and recently turned endurance athlete, who thrives on pushing limits—both in science and sports. Born and raised in Jammu, India, he earned a B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from IIT Delhi, where an internship at the University of Oxford first sparked his interest in genomics. Before joining Mount Sinai, he trained in evolutionary bioinformatics as a Research Fellow at IIT Delhi. Now, he works with single-cell technologies, and is excited to apply them to biomedical discovery. In his free time, he enjoys playing sports, experimenting in the kitchen, getting lost in books, and listening to music. His friends refer to him as a competitive eater—a title he neither confirms nor denies.

Darielle Lewis-Sanders is a current second year PhD student in neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She is in Dr. Jinye Dai’s lab studying synaptic molecules related to social behavior. Outside of the lab Darielle enjoys anything that involves creativity. She loves to go to museums, see Broadway shows, and dance. Storytelling has been a fun way to collide the world of science and creativity together.

Road to Resilience

An anxious woman’s worst fears come true. A young man grasps for a ladder out of poverty and depression. On this episode, two resilience stories told live by neuroscience PhD students at Icahn Mount Sinai. Featuring “unsanctioned” breast exams, zebra finches, and Designer Receptors Activated Only by Designer Drugs (DREADDs). These stories were performed live at the Studying the Brain storytelling event hosted by The Friedman Brain Institute at El Barrio's Artspace PS109 on March 11, 2019.

Listen to Anastasia Efthymiou and Joseph Simon, IV share their Studying the Brain stories.