Can Brain Science Help Advance Artificial Intelligence?

Dmitri "Mitya" Chklovskii serves as a Group Leader within the Simons Foundation's Flatiron Institute and holds a position as a Research Associate Professor at the NYU Medical Center. Dr. Chklovskii’s academic journey began with a Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1994 after which he was awarded a prestigious Junior Fellowship at the Harvard Society of Fellows. His career trajectory took a sharp turn at the Salk Institute where he transitioned to theoretical neuroscience. Subsequently he served as Assistant and Associate Professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory between 1999 and 2007. His passion to understand brain structure took him to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Farm as a Group Leader. There, his team achieved a milestone by reconstructing the most comprehensive connectome available at the time. Relocating to New York in 2014, Dr. Chklovskii and his team continue to reverse engineer the brain’s structure and function. They are constructing a theoretical framework, with the dual goals of advancing brain-inspired artificial intelligence and designing treatments for brain disorders.