Daniel Wolpert | |
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Born | England | 8 September 1963
Nationality | British |
Citizenship | UK |
Alma mater |
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Spouse | Mary Anne Shorrock |
Parent |
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Awards |
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Scientific career | |
Fields | |
Institutions | |
Thesis | Overcoming time delays in sensorimotor control (1992) |
Doctoral advisor | John Stein |
Doctoral students | Sarah-Jayne Blakemore [2] [3] |
Website | wolpertlab |
Daniel Mark Wolpert FRS [4] FMedSci (born 8 September 1963) [5] is a British medical doctor, neuroscientist and engineer, who has made important contributions in computational biology. He was Professor of Engineering at the University of Cambridge from 2005, and also became the Royal Society Noreen Murray Research Professorship in Neurobiology from 2013. [1] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] He is now Professor of Neurobiology at Columbia University.
Wolpert was educated at the Hall School and Westminster School. [5] He went on to the University of Cambridge to study mathematics, but after only a year he shifted to medicine, as it seemed to him "that medics were having much more fun than mathematicians." [13] He completed a Bachelor of Arts in medical sciences in 1985, then completed his Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (BM BCh) in 1988, and PhD in physiology in 1992 from the University of Oxford. [14]
Wolpert pursued computational neuroscience as postdoctoral researcher (1992–1994) and McDonnell-Pew Fellow (1994–1995) in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [15] Daniel Wolpert on his qualification as medical doctor worked as Medical House officer in Oxford, in 1988. After completion of his research in 1995, he joined the faculty of Sobell Department of Neurophysiology, Institute of Neurology, University College London, as a Lecturer. He became Reader in Motor Neuroscience in 1999, and full Professor in 2002. He was appointed to Professor of Engineering at the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, in 2005. In 2013, he also became the Royal Society Noreen Murray Research Professorship in Neurobiology. [6] In 2018, he moved to Columbia University to become Professor of Neurobiology.
Wolpert was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2012, his nomination reads
Daniel Wolpert is a world leader in the computational study of sensorimotor control and learning, transforming our understanding of how the brain controls movement. Combining theoretical and behavioural work, he has placed the field of sensorimotor control firmly within the probabilistic domain and shown how neural noise plays a pivotal role in determining both how we process information during action and how we generate actions. His empirical discoveries and theoretical work on internal models have shown how ubiquitous they are for a range of core processes from motor learning, through sensory processing to social cognition; and how disorders of internal models can lead to neuropsychological disorders. [4]
Other awards include:
Wolpert is the son of South-African born developmental and evolutionary biologist Lewis Wolpert, and his wife Elizabeth (née Brownstein).
Since 1990, Wolpert has been married to Mary Anne Shorrock; they have two daughters. [5]
Zoubin Ghahramani FRS is a British-Iranian researcher and Professor of Information Engineering at the University of Cambridge. He holds joint appointments at University College London and the Alan Turing Institute. and has been a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge since 2009. He was Associate Research Professor at Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science from 2003–2012. He was also the Chief Scientist of Uber from 2016 until 2020. He joined Google Brain in 2020 as senior research director. He is also Deputy Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence.
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Maria Grazia Spillantini, is Professor of Molecular Neurology in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Cambridge. She is most noted for identifying the protein alpha-synuclein as the major component of Lewy bodies, the characteristic protein deposit found in the brain in Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies. She has also identified mutations in the MAPT gene as a heritable cause for frontotemporal dementia.
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and co-director of the Wellcome Trust PhD Programme Neuroscience at University College London.
Karalyn Eve Patterson, is a British psychologist in Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge and MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. She is a specialist in cognitive neuropsychologyand an Emeritus Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge.
Sophie Kerttu Scott is a British neuroscientist and Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow at University College London (UCL). Her research investigates the cognitive neuroscience of voices, speech and laughter particularly speech perception, speech production, vocal emotions and human communication. She also serves as director of UCL's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.
Martin Hume Johnson is emeritus professor of Reproductive Sciences in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience (PDN) at the University of Cambridge.
Michael A. Häusser FRS FMedSci is professor of Neuroscience, based in the Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research at University College London (UCL).
Annette Catherine Dolphin is a Professor of Pharmacology in the Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology at University College London (UCL).
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