The biggest star of the event was Professor Terry Sejnowski, the president of the Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation (NeurIPS). Based on his work on the Boltzmann machine together with Nobel laureate Geoffry Hinton in the1980s, Sejnowski can be regarded as one of the founding fathers of modern AI. With the Boltzmann machine, Sejnowski and Hinton introduced one of the first learning algorithm for multilayer neural networks, and laid the foundation for deep learning.
Sejnowski attended FENS this year to receive the Brain Prize, the world's largest prize for brain research, awarded by the Lundbeck Foundation. In the Brain Prize lecture, chaired by NORA’s CEO, Klas Pettersen, Sejnowski talked about «Brains and AI».
After the Brain Prize lecture, Sejnowski participated in NORA’s CuttingEdgeAI event, chaired by Professor Gaute Einevoll from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences.
CuttingEdgeAI opened with a talk from Professor Kenneth Harris. Aside from being a leading figure in experimental neuroscience, he is renowned for his groundbreaking work on the integration of AI techniques in the analysis of neural data. In his fascinating talk, he presented impressive and practical examples of how AI can be used to accelerate research - in particular to accelerate the analysis of experimental data.
Harris’ talk was followed by a panel discussion on the use of simplification in computational neuroscience. The panelists were Mazviita Chirimuuta, a science philosopher and author of the recent book “The Brain Abstracted” and the experienced modeler Terry Sejnowski. The panel discussion was chaired by Einevoll, and recorded as part of Einevoll’s podcast-series Theoretical Neuroscience.