© Manu Prakash
The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) announced the 2026 cohort of Grass Fellows, marking the 75th anniversary of the prestigious Grass Fellowship Program. Isaac Siu-Shing Wong, a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Anthony Hyman at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG), is one of the fellows. He will pursue his project “Dancing diatoms as a proto-neural model” as a Grass Fellow and will work at MBL for 14 weeks in his independent, self-directed research project.
In his project, Isaac Siu-Shing Wong will investigate a chain-forming diatom, a microscopic unicellular algae, as a simple system for studying collective behavior between cells.
Many simple organisms exhibit neural-like behaviors despite lacking neurons, suggesting that complex, coordinated dynamics may emerge through alternative biological mechanisms.
- Isaac Siu-Shing
His work will examine how coordinated behavior emerges from interactions between individual cells with the aim to identify general principles by which simple cellular systems produce organized, collective dynamics.
Selected and fully supported by The Grass Foundation, fellows join the dynamic MBL scientific community, working in the Grass Laboratory. During their residency, they pursue original research projects while engaging in the collaborative intellectual environment that has defined the program for more than seven decades.
The 2026 Grass Fellows represent a diverse set of research interests and experimental systems, from cephalopods and zebrafish to butterflies and water striders, and will investigate a wide range of neuroscience questions.