CONFIRMED SPEAKERS

PLENAry Lectures

Nelson Spruston

Chief of Janelia Scientific Operations & Programs, Janelia Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, USA.

The goal of our lab is to understand how different hippocampal cell types communicate with their synaptic partners within and outside of the hippocampal circuit, altering their activity and connections as a function of experience.

Sara A. Solla

Professor, Department of Neuroscience Department of Physics and Astronomy Northwestern University, USA.

My work focuses on understanding information processing in the brain. I use techniques from statistical physics, nonlinear dynamics, information theory, statistical inference, and machine learning to investigate how networks of neurons process sensory inputs, store and retrieve memories, accumulate evidence for decision making, and control motor outputs.

Speakers

Adrien Peyrache

Professor, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Canada.

The lab aims to unravel the brain’s navigational and memory networks.

Alison L. Barth

Maxwell H. and Gloria C. Connan Professor in the Life Sciences, Mellon College of Science, Carnegie Mellon University, USA.

The Barth lab studies how sensory learning changes neural circuits in the cerebral cortex, with special interest in input- and target-specific synaptic changes across the cortical column.

Aparna Suvrathan

Professor, Centre for Research in Neuroscience, Department of Pediatrics, McGill University; Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, Montreal, Canada.

My lab is interested in the cerebellum, in both health and disease, with the overarching aim of bridging the gaps between synaptic function and behavior.

Bartlett Mel

Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Viterbi School of Engineering, University of South California, USA.

We develop models at different levels of abstraction (from detailed biophysical models of single neurons to abstract network-level models) to help explain the remarkable computing capabilities of neural tissue.

Bénédicte Amilhon

Professor of Neuroscience. The CHU Ste-Justine Azrieli Research Center, Faculty of Medicine, University of Montreal, Canada.

We study the neural mechanisms of hippocampus dependent learning and emotion-related processes.

Carlos R. Ponce

Professor Department of Neurobiology Harvard Medical School, USA.

We study visual processing in the monkey brain using electrophysiology and deep learning networks for stimulus generation, computational simulations, and hypothesis development.

Chris Pack

Professor, Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital McGill University, Canada.

We study the visual system with the goal of relating neural activity in visual cortex to behavior, learning, and perception.

David Freedman

Professor, Department of Neurobiology, The University of Chicago, USA.

We study mechanisms of visual decision making and learning in biological and artificial neural networks.

Eilif B. Muller

IVADO Associate Research Professor & Canada CIFAR AI Chair, Associate Faculty Member – Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute (Mila), The CHU Ste-Justine Azrieli Research Center. Department of Neurosciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Montreal, Canada.

Our research aim is the integrative computational modeling of the emergence of learning from synaptic plasticity in neocortical circuits.

Elizabeth A. Buffalo

Professor and Chair, Department of Physiology and Biophysics Wayne E. Crill Endowed Professor University of Washington School of Medicine, USA.

My laboratory focuses on understanding the neural mechanisms that support learning and memory.

Eva Dyer

Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.

The Neural Data Science or NerDS Lab, work at the interface of natural and artificial intelligence. We are passionate about building new technology to understand brain data and neural computation, and at the same time, translating insights from natural intelligence back into the design of new neuro-inspired AI systems.

Fred Hamker

Professor for Artificial Intelligence, Department of Computer Science, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany.

We take a model-driven approach to studying how the brain learns and operates at a functional level, particularly with respect to cognition and vision.

Jean-Claude Beique

Professor, Brain and Mind Research Institute, University of Ottawa, Canada.

Associative learning often requires the binding of events that are separated in time. We aim to understand cellular mechanisms that allow the brain to solve this so-called temporal credit assignment problem.

Jesper Sjöström

Professor, Centre for Research in Neuroscience, Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre, Montreal, Canada.

We explore the phenomenology, mechanisms, and consequences of synaptic plasticity in cortical microcircuits using multiple-patch electrophysiology, custom optics, optogenetics, and computer modelling.

Johanna Senk

Lecturer in Computer Science, Sussex AI, School of Engineering and Informatics, University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom; Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6) and JARA-Institute Brain Structure-Function Relationships (INM-10), Research Center Juelich, Germany.

We develop and simulate computational models to study the structure and dynamics of neuronal networks.

Kurt Haas

Professor, Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences, and School of Biomedical Engineering University of British Columbia, Canada.

We design and build fast 3D scanning two-photon microscopes allowing sampling fluorescent biosensors of neural activity throughout entire dendritic arbors and somata of individual growing brain neurons to understand how sensory stimuli is processed and directs growth, synaptogenesis and receptive field development.

María José Escobar

Professor, Department of Electronic Engineering Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Chile.

My research is focused on understanding the computational mechanisms the retina uses to process visual information. It also addresses how computational neuroscience could contribute to designing algorithms for AI and cognitive robotics.

Marja-Leena Linne

Docent and Head of Computational Neuroscience Group Faculty of Medicine and Health Technology, Tampere University, Finland.

My lab is dedicated to unraveling the functions of neuronal and glial cells in the information processing and learning of neural circuits, both in healthy states and during disease, employing a combination of experimental, computational, and machine learning approaches.

Markus Diesmann

Director; Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine. Professor in Computational and Systems Neuroscience & Institute for Advanced Simulation – Theoretical Neuroscience; Research Center Juelich, Germany.

Our research focuses on simulating large-scale cortical networks at cellular resolution.

Mihai Petrovici

Group Leader, NeuroTMA Lab, Department of Physiology, University of Bern, Switzerland.

Our lab is interested in physical substrates of intelligence, both biological and artificial.

Richard Naud

Professor, Brain and Mind Research Institute, University of Ottawa, Canada.

We aim to understanding the relationship between neural coding and learning.

Robert Legenstein

Professor, Institute of Theoretical Computer Science, Graz University of Technology, Austria.

We investigate principles of learning in biological and artificial neural systems.

Roberto Araya

Professor of Neuroscience. The CHU Ste-Justine Azrieli Research Center, Faculty of Medicine, University of Montreal, Canada.

Our aim is to understand how information is processed, stored, and computed by cortical neuronal circuits, and relate this to the control of learning and behavior in health and disease.

Rubén Moreno-Bote

Serra Húnter Professor and ICREA Academia Director of the Theoretical and Cognitive Neuroscience Group Center for Brain and Cognition & Dept. of Information and Communications Technologies University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.

We sudy computational Neuroscience of Natural and Artificial Intelligence.

Shahab Bakhtiari

Professor, University of Montreal and Mila (Quebec AI Institute), Canada.

We aim to understand how neural development and lifelong perceptual learning shape the visual system through a “NeuroAI” approach, integrating neuroscience and artificial intelligence.

Simon Chen

Professor, Canada Research Chair Tier II Brain and Mind Research Institute University of Ottawa, Canada.

Bridging the gap between cellular mechanisms and neural circuit plasticity underlying motor skill learning in healthy and disease brains.

Sonja Grün

Director, Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine – Computational and Systems Neuroscience & Institute for Advanced Simulation – Theoretical Neuroscience; Research Center Juelich, Germany.

The objective of the lab is the development of analysis strategies and tools that uncover concerted activity in massively parallel electrophysiological recordings from cortex.