Program Day 1- January 9, 2023

Bio: Dr Tapan K Gandhi is currently working as Associate Professor in the Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Cadence Chair Professor of AI and Automation, Joint Faculty in School of AI, IIT Delhi and adjunct faculty in the school of AI and data science, IIT Jodhpur, Fellow of IETE and INAE. He is also research affiliate to MIT, USA. He received his Ph.D. fellowship from (MIT, USA) and obtained his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from IIT Delhi.
Following his Ph.D., he has spent couple of years as postdoctoral research scientist at MIT, USA. Dr Gandhi was also awarded an INSPIRE Faculty in the engineering & technology category of the Department of Science & Technology, Govt. of India. During this 5 years tenure, he is awarded as the excellent INSPIRE Faculty by DST, Govt. of India. His research expertise spans from Computational Neuroscience, Brain imaging, Assistive Technology, Bio-medical Instrumentation, machine learning, Cognitive Computing to Artificial intelligence.
He has published papers in top ranking journals like Nature, PNAS, Current Biology, PloS Biology, IEEE Transactions. He has more than 180 publications in International journals and conference proceedings.
He has received many awards in India (including one from Ex-President of India, Dr Kalam) and abroad for his academic excellence and groundbreaking research. His research work is not only published in top-notch journals but also appeared in many popular presses including TIME magazine, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, MIT News, Harvard News, Wall street Journal and also in the SCIENCE Magazine. Dr Gandhi’s work was selected as cover page in Science Magazine in 2015. He has delivered many invited talks in National and International Universities like MGH, Harvard University, Yale University, MIT, Copenhagen University, University of Groningen. He is one of the international member in European Union joint projects on Vision Sciences and collaborator in many international projects.
He has four patents and three technologies transfer to Ministry of Social Justice, Govt. of India. He is serving as expert member (Task Force) in various research committees in Govt. of India, UNESCO as well as reviewers in many journals like IEEE, Elsevier, and Springer etc. He has also received Platinum Jubilee YOUNG SCIENTIST award 2015 by National Academy of Science in INDIA and GYTI 2019 Award. He is elected Fellow of National Academy of Engineering (FNAE). Presently he is the Chairperson of Project Prakash charitable Trust, that helps in Restoration of Vision and providing education to visually impaireds in India.

Title:  Listening to the Brain: Advancing Science & Serving Humanity

Abstract: The fields of neuroscience and artificial intelligence (AI) have a long and intertwined history. In more recent times, however, communication and collaboration between the two fields has become less commonplace. Understanding how the brain works is considered to be one of the greatest frontiers in modern science and technology. Research in this area is driven not only by curiosity, but also the possibility of making a profound impact on the real world. By advancing our knowledge about the brain, we can help the many millions of people who suffer from neurological disorders, and also realize the promise of artificial intelligence. In my talk, I will highlight some of our work that we have undertaken at the intersection of Neuroscience and AI in last few years. Through our work, I will demonstrate how humanitarian research will help in advancement of fundamental science that has huge societal impact and in the same time will inspire in building intelligent machines for future applications.

Session Chair: Supratim Ray

Bio: Dr. Ravi Kiran Sarvadevabhatla is an Assistant Professor affiliated with Centre for Visual Information Technology (CVIT) at IIIT Hyderabad since 2018. He is also the Lead for Mobility-related Applied Projects and Academic Programs at IHub-Data. Advised by Prof. Venkatesh Babu, Dr. Ravi Kiran obtained his Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in 2018. His Ph.D. thesis is the recipient of IUPRAI Best Thesis Award and Sir Vital R Chandavarkar Memorial Gold Medal. Before joining IISc in 2014, he worked in US-based R&D companies during the period 2008-2013. He obtained his MS in Computer Science from University of Washington, Seattle, USA in 2008. Dr. Ravi Kiran has broad-ranging research interests and likes to work on inter-disciplinary problems involving multi-modal multimedia data (images, videos, text, audio, eye-tracking data) and disciplines (Graphics, Robotics, Human-Computer Interaction). For additional details, visit https://ravika.github.io/

Title: Deep Neural Networks for Part-based Object and Scene Representations

Abstract:  Aristotle is said to have famously remarked ‘The whole is greater than the sum of the parts’. Philosophy aside, identifying semantically meaningful parts of an object can enable a richer understanding of visual content. In this talk, I will present deep neural networks for part-based understanding of objects and scene representations. In its original form, the task setting naturally induces a combinatorial explosion of deep network outputs. As part of the talk, I will show that the inductive bias of the task can be exploited to craft deep network architectures which mitigate the combinatorial issue. The capabilities of the resulting deep networks suggest a potential for applications in cognitive studies, graphics and robotics.

Session Chair: Supratim Ray

Bio: Stefano Panzeri is a computational neuroscientist, researching at the interface between theory and experiment. His main research interest is understanding the principles of cortical information processing. He pursues this interest by developing new quantitative data analysis techniques based on the principles of Information Theory and by developing computational models of neural network function.
Stefano received a Laurea in Physics from the University of Torino, and a PhD in Computational Neuroscience from SISSA, Trieste, Italy. He has held personal research awards in both theoretical physics and computational neuroscience, including an INFN junior Fellowship in Theoretical Physics at Turin University, an EU Marie Curie postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Oxford, and an MRC-funded Junior Group Leader position at the University of Newcastle. He has held tenured Faculty positions as assistant, associate and full professor at the Universities of Manchester and Glasgow. He has been visiting scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics and at Harvard Medical School for several years. He served as Coordinator of the Center for Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems of IIT. He also served as Deputy Chair of the UK Medical Research Council Panel for fellowships in Bioinformatics and Neuroinformatics. He currently works as Full Professor and Director of the Department of Excellence for Neural Information Processing at University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), Hamburg, Germany.

Title: How correlations between neurons influence the encoding and readout of sensory information

Abstract: The collective activity of a population of neurons is critical for many brain functions. A fundamental question is how activity correlations between neurons affect how neural populations process information. We present a theory, built on the analyses of simultaneous recordings of activity of populations on neurons either in sensory or posterior parietal cortical areas, of how such correlations serve multiple functions performed by neural populations, including shaping the encoding of information in population codes, generating codes across multiple timescales, and facilitating information transmission to and readout by downstream brain areas to guide behavior. Here, we review this theory and we further present ideas on how to combine large-scale simultaneous recordings of neural populations, computational models, analyses of behavior, optogenetics, and anatomy to unravel how the structure of correlations might be optimized to serve multiple functions.

Session Chair: Supratim Ray

Bio: 

Rajesh P. N. Rao is the CJ and Elizabeth Hwang Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Washington (UW), Seattle. He is also the co-Director of the Center for Neurotechnology (CNT), Adjunct Professor in the Bioengineering department, and faculty member in the Neuroscience Graduate Program at UW. He directs the Neural Systems Laboratory located in the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering. His awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholar award, an NSF CAREER award, an ONR Young Investigator Award, a Sloan Faculty Fellowship, and a David and Lucile Packard Fellowship.

His research interests span computational neuroscience, brain-computer interfaces, and artificial intelligence as well as the Indus script and classical Indian paintings.

Session Chair: SP Arun

Bio: Aditya Goyal graduated from Elite school of optometry in 1989. He completed M.S. In clinical optometry from Pennsylvania college of optometry, Salus University and has been practicing the Science and art of optometry since 1989. He is also a fellow of COVD and is pursuing fellowship of NORA at present.

Presently, he is the principal of Sankara college of optometry, Bangalore and is also the head and mentor, Optometry in the Sankara eye care group. Aditya Goyal is also an adjunct faculty at Pennsylvania college of optometry, Salus University, USA. Being interested in optometric education, he is on the board of the association of schools and colleges of optometry, India and serves as President on the board of ASCO, India.

Aditya lectures widely on the topics related to vision therapy, neuro vision, visual perception, behavioral and developmental optometry, pediatric optometry and low vision. He has a number of presentations and publications both in India and abroad to his credit and is on the editorial review boards of two prestigious international journals – OVP and JOEHR.

College of optometrists in vision development (COVD), USA honored Aditya with the prestigious “making vision therapy visible” award in 2019. He was also honored with “Asia outstanding optometrist award” in 2022.

Title: Vision is not just seeing

Abstract: Vision is much more than just seeing. It is the eyes which collaborate with a number of other senses and finally results in an ultimate process called “vision”. Starting at an embryonic age of just 18 days, eyes lead the body everywhere. The neural relations of the eyes with the vestibular system, supra nuclear areas, brain stem, medial longitudinal fasciculus, superior colliculus etc speaks volumes about the role of vision in controlling our balance and so much more..With 8 out of 12 cranial nerves involved in vision, nature has done no injustice to an inch in diameter eyeballs. Let us go on a journey of our eyes, their neural connections and the emergent vision.

Session Chair: SP Arun