The 10th "WAYS+" Youth Salon was held in London from April 19 to 22 as part of the 2026 International Mesoscopic Biology Conference. Hosted at the Royal Academy in London, the event was themed "Brain Science and AI: Cross-Disciplinary Innovation from the Perspective of Young Scientists."

The salon was jointly hosted by the World Association of Young Scientists (WAYS) and the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence (CAAI), with support from the WAYS Committee on Talent Development and Career Development and the Zhongguancun Association for the Promotion of Small and Medium-sized Technology and Culture Enterprises. Nearly 100 young scientists from China, the United Kingdom, the United States and other countries took part, representing institutions including Tsinghua University, Stanford University, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Oxford. Qionghai Dai, President of CAAI and a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, attended the event and delivered opening remarks.

Discussions explored emerging areas such as intelligent imaging, data-driven research and the application of AI in the life sciences, creating a platform for closer interaction between brain science and artificial intelligence. The event also saw the launch of WM-EMO, a multimodal foundation model for emotion analysis. In parallel, WAYS initiated work on a group standard for assessing young scientists’ cross-disciplinary innovation capabilities, along with a global talent database for young researchers working across fields.

The keynote session featured Tianzi Jiang, researcher at the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Director of the Brainnetome Center; Michael Häusser, Dean of the School of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Hong Kong; and Li Su, head of the Artificial Intelligence and Computational Neuroscience Group at the University of Cambridge. Their presentations examined recent advances in computational neuroscience, AI and frontier research in brain science.

A round-table on "From Brain Science to AI Applications: Advancing Collaborative Innovation" brought together researchers from academia and industry. Speakers including Gang Pan, Director of the State Key Laboratory of Brain-Machine Intelligence at Zhejiang University, and Dr Fernando Roses, Lecturer in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Sussex, discussed how scientific discoveries can move more effectively toward real-world applications.

By connecting researchers across disciplines, regions and sectors, the salon strengthened dialogue between brain science and AI while opening up new opportunities for international collaboration and technology transfer.