College of Science Distinguished Speaker: A Deep Learning Revolution for Science
College of Science Distinguished Speaker:
A Deep Learning Revolution for Science
Dr. Terrence Sejnowski
Francis Crick Professor, Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Distinguished Professor, University of California, San Diego
Abstract:
The neural network pioneers in the 1980s were a highly interdisciplinary group of researchers who came together to solve the most challenging problems in speech recognition, computer vision and natural language processing. Thirty years later and with a million times more computer power and data, learning algorithms for deep neural networks have delivered solutions to many of these problems. But the most important impact of deep learning is on many challenging scientific and medical problems: Predicting how proteins fold; enhancing images taken with optical microscopes to nanometer super-resolution; diagnosing skin lesions and tumors with super-human accuracy. These and many other applications of neural networks are having a far-reaching influence on science in the 21st century.
Speaker Bio:
Terrence Sejnowski has turned to computer modeling techniques to try to encapsulate what we know about the brain as well as to test hypotheses on how brain cells process, sort and store information. While other scientists have focused on mapping the physical arrangement of neurons (tracing which cells connect to which), Sejnowski is interested in a more functional map of the brain, one that looks at how sets of cells are involved in processes—from filtering what we see to recalling memories. To collect data on brain function, Sejnowski records the electrical activity of select sets of cells, as well as analyzes thin slices of autopsied brains. He uses that information to create and refine computational models on how the brain stores information for different activities. Through these models, he gets a better understanding of what information different cell types encode, what molecules are needed and how signals move throughout the brain. At the same time, he learns how diseases such as schizophrenia or Parkinson’s might alter these patterns.
Read more: https://www.salk.edu/scientist/terrence-sejnowski/
From 1978–1979 Sejnowski was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biology at Princeton University with Alan Gelperin and from 1979–1981 he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School with Stephen Kuffler. In 1982 he joined the faculty of the Department of Biophysics at the Johns Hopkins University, where he achieved the rank of Professor before moving to San Diego, California in 1988. He was an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 1991 to 2018.He has had a long-standing affiliation with the California Institute of Technology, as a Wiersma Visiting Professor of Neurobiology in 1987, as a Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar in 1993 and as a part-time Visiting Professor 1995–1998. In 2004 he was named the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute and the director of the Crick-Jacobs Center for Theoretical and Computational Biology. Among many other honors, Dr. Sejnowski was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2008. In 2010 he was elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2011. In 2017 he was elected to the National Academy of Inventors. This places him in a group of only three living scientists to have been elected to all 4 of the national academies. In 2013 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2014. He was awarded the 2015 Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience from the Society for Neuroscience.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Sejnowski
Intended Audience: No background knowledge required. All are welcome. Dr. Sejnowski has been invited by the Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science. To request an interpreter, please visit myaccess.rit.edu
Event Snapshot
When and Where
Who
Open to the Public
Interpreter Requested?
No