news section updated

Author: hiteshvaidya

docs/images/1d2e112b297045b312837fa0542e79b56b1d2860.jpg

@@ -1,5 +1,99 @@
-# 2025
-[date] - achievement
+# News & Achievements
 
-# 2024
-[date] - achievement
+Welcome to our lab's news page! Here you'll find the latest updates on our research milestones, student achievements, publications, awards, and other exciting developments from the TKAI Lab.
+
+---
+
+## 2025
+
+### October 2025
+
+**📚 Research Publications**
+
+- One paper accepted in **Neural Networks** - predictive coding survey with Karl Friston and Rajesh Rao
+
+### September 2025
+
+**🏆 Conference Acceptances**
+
+- One paper accepted in **NeurIPS 2025 workshop** - Circuit Complexity From Physical Constraints: Scaling Limitations of Attention - Congratulations **Benjamin**!
+- One paper accepted in **EMNLP 2025 (main)** - ["Investigating Pedagogical Teacher and Student LLM Agents: Genetic Adaptation Meets Retrieval Augmented Generation Across Learning Style"](https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=ogxlzgcAAAAJ&sortby=pubdate&citation_for_view=ogxlzgcAAAAJ:vV6vV6tmYwMC) - Congratulations to students and collaborators.
+
+### July 2025
+
+**🎤 Invited Presentations**
+
+- TKAI lab was invited to present work "Bridging Neural and Symbolic Computation: A Learnability Study of RNNs on Counter and Dyck Languages" by Thomas Lukasiewicz group university of Vienna
+
+**📝 Conference Papers**
+
+- Two more papers accepted into **NeSy 2025**:
+  - "Neuro‑Symbolic Data Collection Automata for Training Language Models on Edge Devices" with colleagues from Drexel University
+  - "Bridging Neural and Symbolic Computation: A Learnability Study of RNNs on Counter and Dyck Languages" in collaboration with Penn State
+
+**🎓 Student Achievement**
+
+- **Rushitha Santhoshi Mamidala**'s Master's thesis titled "*Rethinking Reasoning in LLMs: Neuro-Symbolic Local RetoMaton Beyond ICL and CoT*" has been accepted to the NeSy 2025 conference for both an oral and a poster presentation.
+
+### June 2025
+
+**🎤 Conference Presentations**
+
+- Dr. Mali and Colleague presented "Empirical and Computational Advances in Enzyme Kinetics Prediction: A Machine Learning Approach to Catalytic Variability" in international metabolic engineering society
+
+**🏆 Prestigious Award**
+
+- Dr. Mali and his colleagues won prestigious "**2025 ARMA rock mechanics research award**" for their paper "Crustal Permeability Generated Through Microearthquakes is Constrained by Seismic Moment, Nature Communications, 15:2057"
+
+**🎓 PhD Defense Success**
+
+- **Congratulations Dr. Neisarg Dave** for successfully defending his PhD Thesis - Dr. Dave was co-advised by Dr. Mali and will join ADP as Research Scientist.
+
+### May 2025
+
+**🎤 Panel Participation**
+
+- Dr. Mali was invited as panelist at USF AMP conference (https://www.theampconference.com/agenda/session/1624886)
+
+**📝 Conference Acceptance**
+
+- One paper accepted in **IEEE International Conference on Smart Computing**
+
+**🏆 Student Award**
+
+- Undergraduate researcher **Shrabon Das** won USF CSE UG Award
+
+### April 2025
+
+**🏆 Student Research Excellence**
+
+- **Abdul-Malik Zekri** presented a poster at the 2025 OneUSF Undergraduate Research Conference, won the 2025 Undergraduate Research - General Disciplinary Student Award, and was recognized at the USF Student Research Awards Luncheon.
+
+![Abdul-Malik at OneUSF Conference](images/1d2e112b297045b312837fa0542e79b56b1d2860.jpg){ width="400" }
+
+- **Abdul-Malik Zekri** presented a poster at the 2025 National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) titled *"Evolutionary Optimization of Biologically-Inspired Mechanistic Input-Output Neural Circuit Models in the Auditory Pathway."* The project used custom genetic algorithms to evolve spiking neural circuits based on empirical input-output data.
+
+![Abdul-Malik at NCUR](images/7d160768c63f3424477bd2c31f7c9928698831dc.png){ width="300" }
+
+### March 2025
+
+**🏆 National Scholarship**
+
+- **Abdul-Malik Zekri** was awarded the **Barry Goldwater Scholarship**, a nationally prestigious scholarship recognizing outstanding undergraduate researchers in STEM fields, for work spanning biologically-inspired neural circuit modeling with Dr. Ankur Mali to semi-automated mitochondria segmentation workflows in collaboration with Dr. George Spirou's Auditory Development and Connectomics Lab.
+
+### February 2025
+
+**🔬 Research Program**
+
+- **Abdul-Malik Zekri** was accepted to the **Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) Undergraduate Research Program (URP)** for Summer 2025. He will work under Dr. Anthony Zador on a project developing a general model of neuromodulation in neural networks.
+
+### January 2025
+
+**🎉 Student Internships**
+
+- **Yusra Rasool** secured an internship position at Nucor as data intern in the Business development Team.
+- **Zhanna Sergeeva** secured an internship position at Dell as a software Engineer.
+
+---
+
+*Last updated: October 2025*