SNL 2026 teaser with Valentina Borghesani and Ryan Law

In this episode, I talk with Valentina Borghesani and Ryan Law from the SNL Program Committee about their exciting plans for the 2026 conference in Geneva, Switzerland.

SNL 2026

Transcript

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[Music]

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Welcome to episode 37 of the Language Neuroscience Podcast.

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This episode is a bit different. We're not going to be talking so much about science,

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but we're going to be talking about the upcoming Society for Neurobiology of Language

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annual meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. I'm joined by Valentina Borghesani and Ryan Law

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from the Program Committee to tell us about the conference. All right, let's get to it.

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Hi, Vale. Hi, Ryan. How are you guys doing today?

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Hi. Doing great.

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Yeah, good. Thank you for having us.

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Yeah, thanks for joining me. As you know, this is a very different episode. We're here to talk about

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the upcoming SNL conference in Geneva. But before we get to that, I just want to kind of share

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with our listeners a little bit about who you both are. So, Vale, can you start and just tell us

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about yourself, where you are, and what you're working on these days?

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Yeah, sure. So, I am an assistant professor here in Geneva, conveniently,

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by the location of next SNL meeting. I started my position here about three years ago, three years

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and a half. And I work on the interaction between language and other cognitive functions, in particular

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semantic memory and executive functions. So, we run studies on, let's say,

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lexicosemantics in healthy population, especially multilinguals, of which we have a lot here in Switzerland,

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thankfully. But also some clinical work with patients, for example, fronto-temporal dementia.

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Cool. And can you share with us like, what is the project right now that you're most excited about

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that kind of like, where you're kind of waiting to find hours for that one in the week?

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Probably the one where we are testing bilinguals, elderly, with, without

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various kind of dementia and try to see if L1 or L2 are the ones that provide the best

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indicators of the kind of dementia they might be having or developing.

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Okay. And it's a collaborative project we're running both here and in South America in Peru.

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So we're going to have different kinds of multilinguals, different kinds of L1 and L2. So,

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it's pretty exciting. And do you have any inkling yet if whether L1 or L2 is more informative for that?

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No, we're really in the data collection phase. So, that's EEG and a lot of behavioral measures

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that we are collecting. And yeah, we really, we don't have any spoilers for you, but we are very

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excited to have a peek at those data soon. Okay. And I hope that you listened to the last episode.

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I'm sure you did where we talked about bilingualism. I did and I shared with the group.

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Yeah, great. And what's your role on SNL at the moment?

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Yeah. So I am the program committee chair for this year, which is a long title to

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mean that I have to make sure the conference happens and that we have all the necessary meetings

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that leads to the conference happening. But there's really a whole team of people that make the

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decisions increasingly together. So it's actually very fun to sort of herd this right group of people

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in making the decisions for the meeting. Yeah, for sure. You're leading it, but there's a lot of people

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along for the ride. Yeah. Okay, great. And Ryan, how about you? Like, where are you joining us from today?

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And what do you work on these at the moment? Yeah, I'm a final year PhD candidate at the University of

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Cambridge. And what I'm working on at the moment very broadly is how meaning is constructed and conveyed.

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And I'm currently working on a project that uses neural network models and specifically one with

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a dual stream architecture to try and understand kind of a bit of the division of labor between

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kind of ventral and dorsal stream sort of distinction between structure and content. And yeah.

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That's cool. And so is it like primarily modeling or is there an empirical aspect to it as well

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or is it a bit of both? Yeah, so the PhD has a nice blend, I think of two. So I think, yeah, so two-thirds

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of my thesis will have some imaging components of it. So I'm using MEG and EEG to study kind of

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span the interactions between semantic memory and semantic composition. And then the second half is

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kind of shifting gears a little bit into modeling to try and see if we can kind of have a

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have a fuller picture of the whole system. All right. And how far along with the whole project,

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are you? Yeah, so I'm writing up. Okay. It looks exciting. And so a couple of months until I have to submit.

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All right. Well, yeah. Presumably you've written quite a few words on the page.

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And can you tell us about your role in SNL? So I'm the student and postdoc representative to the

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SNL board. And particularly for the conference this year, I'm also part of the program committee.

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So working with Vale on lots and lots of planning different aspects of SNL. And it's my first time

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kind of going behind the scenes. So I really have been learning lots of the intricate certain

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interesting ways conferences are organised, SNL in particular. Yeah. Have you enjoyed being on

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the board in general and getting to meet all those people? Yes, definitely. It's certainly very

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cool as an early career researcher to work with people that I've been reading about,

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whose papers I've been reading from a very different role, from a very different perspective.

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Kind of that transition has been fun for me. Yeah, it's great. I was on the board a few years ago

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and I really enjoyed all the people that I got to know through that role as well. So I kind of,

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you know, a bit jealous of you guys getting to do this because it was really fun. Okay, so let's

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talk about the conference. And what do we want to do? We want to convince our dear listeners that

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they should go to Geneva because we're all going to be there and it's going to be great, right? So

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let's, shall we start with the venue like the town? So Vale, you're from Geneva or you're just

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living in Geneva? No, I'm just living in Geneva, but I really fell in love with the city, the moment I

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arrived. It's wonderfully located at the center of Europe. So it should be extremely convenient for

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everyone coming from Europe to travel to the meeting even by train. We like the idea of being

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as green as possible. So for our friends in Europe, we highly suggest trains because it's extremely

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well connected. But then even for everyone else coming from the US, Canada and the rest of the world,

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there are international flights from all the major apps. So it should be very easy to get in.

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The city itself, I mean, as someone that lives here, I can tell the quality of life is excellent,

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but as a tourist, you also get to appreciate all the benefits of the transport system and all the

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services that the city offers. So it's a, you know, we cannot lie, it's an expensive city,

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Switzerland is an expensive country, but it comes with a lot of benefits. So I'm sure people will enjoy

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even the surrounding to the science, you know, the touristic opportunities they're going to get

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around the scientific content of the meeting. Yeah, what kind of things do you think that people

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would be able to get, find themselves doing and let's say a five day stay where, you know, you're

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wanting to add on some stuff to the science? Yeah, I think one of the main advantages of Geneva is

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that it's not big. So you really get to, but at the same time, it offers a variety of options. So

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you really get to choose if you are more of a nature person. In a few minutes, you can do beautiful

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hikes in the mountains and enjoy the nature. If you're more of a museum culture, you know, historical

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tour kind of person, you can get those. As program committee, we are considering the option of

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sort of help people self-organize a couple of tours because we have good contacts with the tourist

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center in Geneva. So there could be SNL dedicated tours of the city to happen either the day before

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or the Saturday after the conference. That's still in the works and it kind of depends on the

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interest that we receive from the attendees, but that's definitely an option. And Geneva is a

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city rich also in terms of history related to science, right? And to psychology in particular and

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developmental psychology, we can think of Piaget etc. So there could be some tailored tours.

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So it's Piaget, the most famous scientist in our field from Geneva or who else do we have? Probably,

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probably, at least for the psychology oriented folks, but I don't want to offend anyone

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because I know there are other names that I'm probably forgetting right now.

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And how's the eating and drinking? Like, would we have any like local specialties that we can enjoy?

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In general, it's a foodie kind of town, so you can find a lot of great options. Chocolate is what,

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chocolate and cheese is what Switzerland and Geneva are famous for. So definitely if anyone is

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into chocolate, there's a nice chocolate pass. So you pay once and then you can go and eat. It's like a

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bar crawling, beer crawling, but for chocolate so you can go around the

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all right Chocolatarey and try different kinds of specialties. So that could be fun.

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That sounds good. Of course, cheese fondue and

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Oh yeah. Okay, that sounds really fun. And then where's the conference being held? Is it like a

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convention center or a university? What's the plan this year? Yeah. So because of the size of the

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conference and how many attendees we are expecting, we went for the International Conference Center

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in Geneva, which is extremely welcoming and a big building with a big auditorium that can easily

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accommodate our whole community. It's also nicely prepared for the scenario. So there are mics

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in every seat. So the question and answering should be extremely easy. There's a nice

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area for our lunches. There's a good enough size poster area, which we know is important for

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our meeting. So yeah, that's where we will spend our three main days. So perhaps one thing we should

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mention is that contrary to other meetings, we are starting a day earlier. So there's a day zero

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as we call it, which is the day prior to the real three days of science. And that would be in

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another building, which is conveniently located 10 minutes away, just walking. So it's not far.

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Okay, well, if we're talking about the day zero, let's talk about those new innovations to the

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program that you're leading. So what happens on day zero? So day zero. The main event is going to be

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the welcoming reception, which happens in the evening from 6 p.m. onwards. And that's just going

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to be a fun networking and socializing, welcoming all of you in Geneva with a nice reception, food and

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drinks. But we thought that since we have this incredible opportunity of showing you where we work,

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because this reception will happen at campus biotech, which is the building where most of the

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interesting language neuroscience research happens. We're going to take that chance to show

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you our settings. And so in the afternoon and during the morning of this day zero, there will be

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some satellite events and extra activity that take place at campus biotech. All right.

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There will be one or two educational courses. I'm not just teasing the topic. We just haven't

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selected yet. We have collected bottom up applications. And we are in the process of selecting

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one or two of those. So we will offer to early career researchers the opportunity of attending to

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this educational course, which is really targeting methods and events in either stats or

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data acquisition technologies. And then there will be two satellite events. So two events that are

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geared to sort of fringes of our community. Yeah. That have taken the occasion to meet and have

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some little workshop the day before. So what have you decided on what the satellite events are going

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to be yet? So the satellite events, one of them is a reunion of a summer school on language.

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Oh yeah. The Kavli summer school. Yep. And the other one is a workshop on

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small world of worlds. So the project on, you know, word association data acquisition

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internationally. So it's a great opportunity for this kind of distributed teams to finally meet

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in person right before SNL and exchange. Okay. And do we get to like come and look at your

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like scanners and labs and all that kind of stuff? That is something we are planning. That's something

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we're planning on offering. So you will have to be in small groups because of course, we want to move

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around the labs. But that's exactly what we would like to do. So to offer doing the reception,

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just grouping people in small groups and show you around our three Tesla, seven Tesla,

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MEG and EEG set up so we can perhaps entice you to collaborate with us in the future.

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So it sounds like day zero has really got something for everybody. I mean, you've got like

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educational courses for ECRs. You've got these specialized groups for people with who are involved

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in those communities. And then everybody could potentially be, you know, checking out your site and

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of course, everybody's going to get together for the welcome event. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

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Day zero is not a day to be missed. No, no, absolutely. And then what happens after that? Like,

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does the conference have a theme that kind of ties it all together? Yeah. So I think we all learned

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after the terrific meeting we had last year at Gallaudet that leveraging the local strength

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really works when setting up the meeting. And so here in Geneva and in Switzerland in general,

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the main strength that we have when it comes to neurobiology of language is the National Center

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for Competence in Research, which is a mouthful, but NCCR, evolving language. So this is a center

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that is distributed across Switzerland. It includes more than 40 research groups that span various

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disciplines from linguistics to biology, anthropology, philosophy. There's really, when we say

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interdisciplinary to the core, and this group takes a very, well a radically comparative approach

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to the study of language. And especially to the study of evolution of language, both in

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diacronic and synchronic sense. So how language came about, how we evolved language, but also how

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language is changing? Okay. So kind of different timescales. So you can kind of go that biological

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timescale, then the social human timescale. Across all the cutting across all the functions of language,

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right? So language as based for communication, as based for thinking, as based for social interaction.

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So we really span the whole. So we decided to take this as a sort of a building block of our theme.

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And we could say that if we want to summarize it, it would be something like a neural

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architecture of language and other cognitive system in an evolutionary perspective. So we're really

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pushing for the evolutionary perspective. We're really pushing for the neurobio. Like how could this

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come to be from a biological system? Oh, that'll be so cool. Well, you know, I'm already

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pre-convinced, but if I wasn't already, you know, buying my ticket I'd be like, I wouldn't be

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able to say no to that as a topic because I just think that's the important direction for our field.

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Yeah. And now we, we, so this topic informed our choice of plenary speakers. And also our choice

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for what is a top-down moderator panel that would take place during the one of the three days.

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But of course, there's, there was a lot of openness to contribution bottom up. We already mentioned

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educational courses, but also the two symposia that we have selected. It was extremely difficult to

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choose because we received plenty of incredible contribution. As usual, it's very difficult to,

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to make the choice. But we landed on two great proposals. One is going to be on how neural evidence

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can constrain theories of language processing, which in a way naturally fits nicely the general theme.

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And the second one is going to be on the role of the dorsal stream in reading. So breaking,

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you know, the mainstream going beyond the visual word form area and breaking the mainstream ventral

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focus. Oh, okay. Yeah, that sounds good. And are you, have you announced yet the plenary speakers or the

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yes. So the plenary speakers are already announced on the website. So we are going to have

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John O'Keefe, Roy Hamilton, and Yanchou Bi. So we're pretty excited of the three plenary speakers. We were

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very grateful they accepted our invitation and very much look forward to their talks.

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The two symposia will be announced probably by the time this episode airs. Okay, depends on how fast

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I edit, I guess. Yeah. And the educational course as soon as we, as we selected, we're not, you know,

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we're not gatekeeping anything. It's just the time it takes to make the choice and then put it on the

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website. Yeah. And it sounds like you've had loads of high quality submissions for all of the

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different opportunities that people had to like make their own parts of the program. Yes, absolutely.

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And we really value the interactive aspect, both of the meeting but also of our

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community and society in general. We really want to promote it. So we also highly encourage

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anyone that submitted a great idea for a symposia, but we could not accommodate in the program. We

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only have three days, unfortunately. We really encourage them to propose some virtual activities. We

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have this great tool that allows us to connect online between one meeting and the other.

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Let's talk about that. Like, well, actually, yeah, can we do it in a, let's do an aside on that.

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Yes, absolutely. So we are, we really encourage that, as I said, anyone that submitted a great idea,

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but couldn't be accommodated in the program. But also the ones that have been selected. We suggested

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they might want to organize a virtual activity to lead into the main event in October,

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so to prepare the audience. And yeah, in general, I'm a big fan of anything that helps our community

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strengthen our interaction. Like, we are, we are many, we are distributed, but we also have so much

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in common, we share so much and we can really work on it and promote collaborations and even just

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exchange of ideas. So I'm big fan of the virtual activities. Highly recommended.

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Yeah, just to and just if you haven't done one before, these are available to all SNL members. And so,

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you know, widely available. They arose during the pandemic when we were kind of looking for ways to

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to make those connections, especially when not everybody was able to attend, well, for a start,

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the conference was virtual two years in a row. And then, and then after that, it was difficult for

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many people to attend for like, you know, pandemic reasons, visa reasons. And so virtual activities were

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a way that we thought that we could kind of plug that gap a bit and provide an alternative way

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of connecting that we more continuous than the annual conference. And they really range in everything

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from like scientific content to career development to methods workshops. And they've, you know,

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we've had activities run by like dozens of, you know, people in the field. So I, if you haven't

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already been to one, I definitely encourage you to check them out. You can find it on the SNL

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website. I think it's under the, it's called member-initiated virtual activities. It's in one of those

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drop-down menus when there's usually a couple of things coming up that you can choose from.

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Yeah. So what about for early career researchers? Is there, how are you going to kind of

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accommodate them and make the conference a welcoming place for those who are newer to our field?

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Yeah. So we recognize that conferences can be, there's a particular kind of perhaps awkwardness

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that comes with these big conferences, perhaps. And for early career researchers, especially,

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it can be quite daunting, right, about being in a room full of people who've heard about, learned

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about in lectures, whose papers you've been reading. And but they don't know your name yet. So there's

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that kind of situation in which you're attending a conference. But the feeling of being part of that

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community is often something that can take a while to build and also to develop those kinds of

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relationships. So at SNL this year, we're trying to take that seriously and being more deliberate about

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it. So there are a couple of types of events that we're planning and preparing for early career

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researchers. And one of this I just wanted to highlight is our lunch with a professor event. And this is

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essentially a structured kind of venue to have conversation that you would otherwise have with

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yourself or your colleagues. And you'd also might not engage in at a conference you're talking

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about. And so the idea is that we bring together early career researchers and professors from

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all levels of their career to meet as researchers with shared interests, not just as kind of audience and

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speaker and to come together. And perhaps I should also highlight and call out that lunch is indeed

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included. And so all you need to bring is a sense of curiosity and all of the questions that you have

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for these professors you'd like to meet. And also we are putting an effort to try and make sure that

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we include early career faculty or often the most generative people to talk to. They're building

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their labs. They're looking for collaborators. They remember what it felt like to be in early career

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positions. So that's one event. And another one which are still kind of being actively planned

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is an evening social. This is a space that's kind of created for early career researchers to

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get together in an informal setting to socialize and get to know one another and build these

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important and long lasting relationships. Okay so are the geezers banned from this event or

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how are you going to gatekeep that one? I don't think that we have a clear like cut off point. I

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think that we've pretty much been suggesting that people can self-identify. But the idea is that

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it's the point is that it's supposed to be very welcoming and inclusive for everybody. So as to not

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feel like if you're early career like worrying that if this is for me or not. I think that's it.

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Yeah okay so it's definitely for early career researchers. Yeah it's like it's funny like I

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definitely do self-identify as early career researcher except that I've noticed over the last

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few years that I'm no longer eligible for almost any kind of like you know programs or awards

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or anything like and I'm just like hang on a sec maybe I'm not an ECR and yeah clearly I'm not.

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Okay we certainly need to category for people who self-idea as early career.

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Yeah the young at heart right or the early career at heart. Thank you. Yeah okay so you lunch with

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the professor the social event. What else have you got going on for ECRs? And also just to highlight

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in addition to what Vale has said about the educational courses that we try to develop

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a really rich and diverse program that caters for lots of people's needs and ones in the in the

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conference and just to also call out a couple of the usual opportunities for early career researchers

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to pay attention to which are the award opportunities that focus on our members' achievements.

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So these include the early career awards and the dissertation awards as well as the abstract

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awards for graduate students and postdocs and in addition to that we're also working hard to make

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sure that we have a securing funding for the travel awards for to help early career researchers

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attend the conference. Okay that's important as Vale said it's like going to be costly but like I

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think it's a worthwhile investment if you can swing it. I definitely remember like as a PhD student

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mostly paying out a pocket to go to conferences and you know it was just like that was like my priority

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for what I wanted to spend my my stipend on. So I hope a lot of people will feel the same way.

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And maybe we can add so Ryan explained how the lunch with professors is going to work but we can also

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say that everyone else will get lunch on site. Okay. Buffet style included with the registration.

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This will will all be announced and explained clearly at the moment of registration but we can

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really tease it because it means that even not so early career researchers will get great

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opportunity to network you know right after the poster session you just take a flight of

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stairs and you get to have lunch with your colleagues and you can self-organize groups and chat and

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catch up with all your colleagues. So yeah you mentioned posters and obviously like you know posters

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are always the heart of SNL right it's a very democratic conference where there are high quality

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posters and so you can how many poster sessions you're going to have and is it going to be like a

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a good you know real serious scientific dialogue like it usually is. Yeah absolutely absolutely that's

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the the one thing we never budged from so we we want that as many poster sessions as we could have so

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that they don't need to be too packed that was our effort what we were trying to optimize for. So we

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will have six poster sessions they all either start or end with one of the meals slash coffee breaks

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so they can expand and in the end end up being about two hours each so that would give plenty of

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time to enjoy you should really be able to see all the posters and get a really good sense of what

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what's happening in the community as in previous year abstract submission includes the option

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to flag it as a work in progress like the sandbox series so we definitely welcome submission both

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of works that are complete and works that are still being you know in data acquisition phase or

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data analysis. I'm really I'm really glad that we've held onto that post pandemic you know like it was

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introduced to solve a short term problem but it actually turns out to be a long term really nice

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change because it just kind of takes that pressure off thinking that you need to have a complete

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work and honestly like that's often it's more valuable to get that input before you've committed

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to every single thing about your analysis. Absolutely exactly yeah maybe in general I can also say we are

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there are two parameters that we're really trying to optimize for and that's why you don't see the

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full program out yet but you will see it very soon. One is that we would like the day not to be too long

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so we are really trying to stay in the 9 to 630 window and also not to have more than two hours

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seated so if there's a plenary talk and then a short slide session that should be it right then we

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should have a coffee break. So we're really trying to to ensure that it's harder than it seems from

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the outside that's why I mentioned it because we also want to pack so much interesting science content

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right in those three days so it's really not not an easy balance. I can say that we do read very

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carefully the feedback that is received at the end of every meeting so we really try hard to please

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as many people as possible. You cannot please everyone but we're really trying and we're very

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much open to feedback and comments so people should not hesitate in general but I guess that's my

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message. They don't hesitate to reach out. On top of that ads that yeah as a because we

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are taking these people's feedback very seriously and when we're for the lunch with professor events

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we're actually splitting it from one big event into a few smaller ones across multiple days

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so that people are not will have the space and comforts to take part in these events instead of

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kind of like trying to talk over one another in a crowded room and also to plan these dedicated

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events to cater to early career researchers so yeah as Vale says like we are taking feedback seriously

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and if you have any comments or things that you would like to see in SNL in the future please do

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or so get in touch with us and we'd love to hear from you as well. Yeah it's clear that you're making

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really concerted effort to you know make the conferences as good as it can be and kind of

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addressing all of those sort of interactional practical issues that I think that we've over the

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years just been kind of improving and improving you know like making the conference better and better

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I think this could be the best one yet so you know many people who are grant funded are going to

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need to submit an abstract if they want to kind of get some help with getting there when do the

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when do we need to get our abstracts done by? Yeah so the abstract deadline is at the end of the month

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in the 22nd that's not even that end is it it's kind of like the mid to end yeah so yeah we're

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recording on 6th of May probably get this out on I don't know 10th 12th May so yeah you've probably got

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a week or two if you're feeling like you know you want to go like Vale said sandbox series like

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it doesn't your work does not have to be polished completed it's not too late to like

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rustle something together. Yeah yeah abstracts are be reviewed so there's a group

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of reviewers that will go through all the submissions just to ensure we don't get AI bots

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occupying a space of a deserving grad student but absolutely work in progress is more than welcome.

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Yeah I definitely encourage everybody to try and find your way there. I haven't even decided

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what I'm going to submit yet but I'm going to rustle up one or more abstracts to make sure that I

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will be there with you both. Okay so is there anything else that you wanted to share with our listeners

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about the conference? Maybe in general we can recommend following SNL social media so SNL is on

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Bluesky, on Twitter, X, and on LinkedIn so that's where you will see always the whenever there's an

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update on the website whether it's program related or virtual activities related you you would

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see it reflected on those social media so that could be a good way to keep up with what's happening

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in the community. But I think we covered all the main points. Yeah and if you're on the fence about

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whether it's become and whether it's worth the travel grants application, I'm personally biased but

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I think this is the year to come. Tou know Geneva in late September it's a tight knit community

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and we've also put in lots of efforts into a program that is actually built with early careers

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early career researchers in mind so definitely encourage you to submit to abstracts and apply for

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the travel awards apply for travel where you are and come to Geneva. I echo that entirely. I

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think this is you know it's going to be an incredible conference and I'm really looking forward to it

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and just like hearing about all the stuff you guys have got planned just makes me even more enthusiastic

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so yeah thank you thank you for all the work you're doing and thanks for coming in chatting to

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the listeners of the podcast to tell kind of you know encourage everybody to get together

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Thank you for having us. Yeah my pleasure. Thank you all. Right well I'll talk to you all soon.

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Bye thanks. All right okay bye okay. Well that's it for episode 37. Thanks very much Ryan and Vale

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for joining me to talk about the conference I'm really looking forward to attending and I hope

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that I will see many of you there. Bye for now and see you next time.