Computational approaches to understanding brain function form an important and growing area of interdisciplinary research. These approaches and associated techniques have acted as a melting pot for researchers from disparate disciplines to come together and address one of the grandest challenges of the 21st century. The grandness of the challenge and the requirement on diverse forms of expertise has deemed that such endeavors require synergistic interactions among neurobiologists and computer scientists. Over the past decade or two, neurobiologists have made significant conceptual advances in our understanding of the brain through technical breakthroughs that have yielded unprecedented opportunities to gather large-scale structural and functional data. On the other hand, over the same period, computer scientists have developed exceptional tools to address questions in machine learning and data analytics, tools that are not only helpful in emulating brain function, but also are radically transforming many applications in information and communication technologies. This workshop on Brain Computation and Learning is aimed at creating this useful dialogue between neurobiologists and computer scientists and educating research students of each area with relevant topics of the other.

A prominent goal of this workshop is to promote synergistic interactions among neurobiologists and computer scientists. The workshop would allow young researchers to understand the diverse themes of research and appreciate the close relationships between these apparently distinct themes.

This workshop is funded by a generous endowment from the Pratiksha Trust, which has been significantly promoting fundamental and translational neuroscience research within the country through the establishment of research centres and chair professorships at the Indian Institutes of Science (Bengaluru) and Indian Institute of Technology Madras (Chennai).