Photo of Prof. Mark J. Schnitzer
November 13, 2015 - 4:00 pm
Mark J. Schnitzer
Prof. Mark J. Schnitzer, Departments of Biology and Applied Physics, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Stanford University
Abstract: A longstanding challenge in neuroscience is to understand how the dynamics of large populations of individual neurons contribute to animal behavior and brain disease....
Jaan Tallinn
September 9, 2015 - 4:00 pm
Jaan Tallinn
CBMM will host a brief talk by Jann Tallinn (followed by extensive QAs): Solving Global Coordination
Jaan Tallinn is an Estonian computer scientist who participated in the development of Skype in 2002 and FastTrack/Kazaa, a file-sharing application, in 2000.
He graduated from the University of...
Building newborn minds in virtual worlds
April 28, 2015 - 4:00 pm
Prof. Justin Wood, USC
Abstract: What are the origins of high-level vision: Is this ability hardwired by genes or learned during development? Although researchers have been wrestling with this question for over a century, progress has been hampered by two major limitations: (1) most newborn animals cannot be raised in...
Prof. Thomas Serre
April 14, 2015 - 4:00 pm
Prof. Thomas Serre, Brown University
Abstract: Perception involves a complex interaction between feedforward (bottom-up) sensory-driven inputs and feedback (top-down) attention and memory-driven processes. A mechanistic understanding of feedforward processing, and its limitations, is a necessary first step towards elucidating key...
Prof. Amnon Shashua, Hebrew University, Co-founder, Chairman & CTO, Mobileye (NYSE:MBLY), OrCam.
March 23, 2015 - 4:00 pm
MIT: McGovern Institute Singleton Auditorium, 46-3002
Prof. Amnon Shashua, Hebrew University, Co-founder, Chairman & CTO, Mobileye (NYSE:MBLY), OrCam.
Brief Biography:
Amnon Shashua holds the Sachs chair in computer science at the Hebrew University. He received his Ph.D. degree in 1993 from the AI lab at MIT working on computational vision where he pioneered work on multiple view geometry and the recognition of objects under variable lighting....
Prof. Jun Zhang
December 2, 2014 - 9:00 pm
Prof. Jun Zhang, Department of Psychology and Department of Mathematics University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Theory-of-mind (ToM) is the modeling of mental states (such as belief, desire, knowledge, perception) through recursive (“I think you think I think …”) type reasoning in order to plan one’s action or anticipate others’ action. Such reasoning forms the core of strategic analysis in the game-...
Brian Nosek, University of Virginia
October 28, 2014 - 4:00 pm
MIT: McGovern Institute Singleton Auditorium, 46-3002
Brian Nosek, University of Virginia Professor in the Department of Psychology and co-founder of Project...
Abstract:
An academic scientist’s professional success depends on publishing.
Publishing norms emphasize novel, positive results. As such, disciplinary incentives encourage design, analysis, and reporting decisions that elicit positive results and ignore negative results.
These incentives inflate...
Tom M. Mitchell: E. Fredkin University Professor and Chair of the Machine Learning Department School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University
September 30, 2014 - 4:00 pm
MIT: McGovern Institute Singleton Auditorium, 46-3002
Tom M. Mitchell: E. Fredkin University Professor and Chair of the Machine Learning Department, School of...
Abstract:
How does the human brain use neural activity to create and represent meanings of words, sentences and stories?  One way to study this question is to give people text to read, while scanning their brain, then develop machine learning methods to discover the mapping between language...
Dr. Christof Koch, Chief Scientific Officer - Allen Institute for Brain Science
September 23, 2014 - 4:00 pm
MIT: McGovern Institute Singleton Auditorium, 46-3002
Dr. Christof Koch, Chief Scientific Officer - Allen Institute for Brain Science
Abstract:
The science of consciousness has made great strides by focusing on the behavioral and neuronal correlates of experience. However, such correlates are not enough if we are to understand even basic facts, for example, why the cerebral cortex gives rise to consciousness but the cerebellum...
Parsing Objects and Scenes in Two- and Three-Dimensions
May 16, 2014 - 4:00 pm
MIT: McGovern Institute Singleton Auditorium, 46-3002
Alan L. Yuille, Professor & Investigator, UCLA
Topic: Progress on CBMM Challenge
Abstract:
We continue the series of weekly discussions and reports on each CBMM challenge question describing progress and problems of ongoing work at CBMM.
Thrust 5 is focused on models for the CBMM challenge that can answer CBMM challenge questions while being...
Gary Marcus
April 22, 2014 - 4:00 pm
MIT: McGovern Institute Singleton Auditorium, 46-3002
Gary Marcus, Professor of Psychology at NYU and Visiting Cognitive Scientist at the Allen Institute for Brain..., Adam Marblestone, Harvard University and Tom Dean, Google
Abstract:
The human neocortex participates in a wide range of tasks, yet superficially appears to adhere to a relatively uniform six-layered architecture throughout its extent. For that reason, much research has been devoted to characterizing a single “canonical” cortical...
Alexander V. Terekhov
March 6, 2014 - 11:45 am
Alexander V. Terekhov, Postdoc, Institute for Intelligent Systems and Robotics, Paris Descartes University (...
Abstract:
The brain sitting inside its bony cavity sends and receives myriads of sensory inputs and outputs. A problem that must be solved either in ontogeny or phylogeny is how to extract the particular characteristics within this “blooming buzzing confusion” that signal the existence and nature...
Joachim M. Buhman
November 7, 2013 - 3:00 pm
MIT: Ray and Maria Stata Center - Star Conference Room, 32-D463
Joachim M. Buhman, Machine Learning Laboratory in the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zurich
Abstract:
Algorithms are exposed to randomness in the input or noise during the computation. How well can they preserve the information in the data w.r.t. the output space? Algorithms especially in Machine Learning are required to generalize over input fluctuations or randomization during execution...
Dmitri “Mitya” Chklovskii
October 10, 2013 - 3:30 pm
MIT: McGovern Institute Singleton Auditorium, 46-3002
Dmitri “Mitya” Chklovskii, Janelia Farm, HHMI
Animal behaviour arises from computations in neuronal circuits, but our understanding of these computations has been frustrated by the lack of detailed synaptic connection maps, or connectomes. For example, despite intensive investigations over half a century, the neuronal implementation of local...

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