The Wu Tsai Institute presents Grand Challenges in Cognition, our 2024 annual conference.
The goal of this year’s conference is to bring together Wu Tsai Faculty Members to identify key scientific challenges on the critical path to understanding human cognition and exploring human potential. Identifying these challenges is the first step in launching the Institute’s new team science initiative that will provide internal support for interdisciplinary, moonshot projects.
This year's conference is limited to Yale faculty who are also members of the Wu Tsai Institute. View the working agenda and speakers below, and register for the conference on Eventbrite.
Agenda
Continental breakfast will begin at 8:30 AM, and doors will open at 8:45 AM.
Chair: John Lafferty, Director of the Center for Neurocomputation and Machine Intelligence, John C. Malone Professor of Statistics & Data Science
In this session, we explore the potential of “foundation models” as a framework for studying the mind and brain. Researchers will discuss how some of the ideas used to train and deploy large language models for AI systems might be adopted to model and integrate information from neuroscience data, across species, tasks, and spatial-temporal scales. Experimentalists and theoreticians will consider how this could form a platform to generate new insights and hypotheses about the general principles of cognition.
Keynote
Blake Richards, Associate Professor of Computer Science and of Neurology and Neurosurgery, McGill University; Core Faculty Member, Mila (The Quebec AI Institute)
Speakers
- Arman Cohan, Assistant Professor of Computer Science
- Smita Krishnaswamy, Associate Professor of Genetics and of Computer Science
- Evelyn Lake, Assistant Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging
- David van Dijk, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Cardiovascular Medicine) and of Computer Science
Details coming soon.
Chair: Kia Nobre, Director of the Center for Neurocognition and Behavior, Wu Tsai Professor of Psychology
Most of our scientific understanding of cognition and behavior comes from highly controlled experimental settings. The advance of wearable, digital, and immersive technologies permits careful experimental manipulations and measurements as humans or animals behave in natural and ecological settings. The session will explore how our understanding of behavioral and brain processes can be upgraded and, in some cases revised, by studying natural behavior in active agents.
Keynote
Mayank Mehta, Professor in Departments of Physics, Neurology, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California - Los Angeles; Director, Center for Physics of Life
Speakers
- Wendy Berry-Mendes, Charles C. and Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Psychology
- Abhishek Bhattacharjee, Professor of Computer Science
- Michael Higley, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, of Biomedical Engineering, and of Psychiatry
- Anirvan Nandy, Assistant Professor in Neuroscience
Details coming soon.
