Shamit Kachru is an American theoretical physicist, a professor emeritus of physics at Stanford University, and a former Wells Family Director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics. He served as the Stanford Physics Department Chair from 2018 to 2021. He retired in 2023.
Terrence Joseph Sejnowski is the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies where he directs the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory and is the director of the Crick-Jacobs center for theoretical and computational biology. He has performed pioneering research in neural networks and computational neuroscience.
Petr Hořava is a Czech string theorist. He is a professor of physics in the Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches courses on quantum field theory and string theory. Hořava is a member of the theory group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics (SITP) is a research institute within the Physics Department at Stanford University. Led by 16 physics faculty members, the institute conducts research in high energy and condensed matter theoretical physics.
The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States.
Tomaso Armando Poggio, is the Eugene McDermott professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, an investigator at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, a member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and director of both the Center for Biological and Computational Learning at MIT and the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, a multi-institutional collaboration headquartered at the McGovern Institute since 2013.
Nancy Jane Kopell is an American mathematician and professor at Boston University. She is co-director of the Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology (CompNet). She organized and directs the Cognitive Rhythms Collaborative (CRC). Kopell received her B.A. from Cornell University in 1963 and her Ph.D. from Berkeley in 1967. She held visiting positions at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France (1970), MIT, and the California Institute of Technology (1976).
William Samuel Bialek is a theoretical biophysicist and a professor at Princeton University and The Graduate Center, CUNY. Much of his work, which has ranged over a wide variety of theoretical problems at the interface of physics and biology, centers around whether various functions of living beings are optimal, and whether a precise quantification of their performance approaches limits set by basic physical principles. Best known among these is an influential series of studies applying the principles of information theory to the analysis of the neural encoding of information in the nervous system, showing that aspects of brain function can be described as essentially optimal strategies for adapting to the complex dynamics of the world, making the most of the available signals in the face of fundamental physical constraints and limitations.
Laurence Frederick Abbott is an American theoretical neuroscientist, who is currently the William Bloor Professor of Theoretical Neuroscience at Columbia University, where he helped create the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience. He is widely regarded as one of the leaders of theoretical neuroscience, and is coauthor, along with Peter Dayan, on the first comprehensive textbook on theoretical neuroscience, which is considered to be the standard text for students and researchers entering theoretical neuroscience. He helped invent the dynamic clamp method alongside Eve Marder.
The Princeton Neuroscience Institute (PNI) is a center for neuroscience research at Princeton University. Founded in the spring of 2004, the PNI serves as a "stimulus for teaching and research in neuroscience and related fields" and "places particular emphasis on the close connection between theory, modeling, and experimentation using the most advanced technologies." It often partners with Princeton University's departments of Psychology and Molecular Biology.
Haim Sompolinsky, is the William N. Skirball Professor of Neuroscience at the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences, and a professor of physics at the Racah Institute of Physics at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. He is also a visiting professor in the Center of Brain Science at Harvard University and the director of Harvard's Swartz Program in Theoretical Neuroscience. He is widely regarded as one of the leaders of theoretical neuroscience.
Carina Curto is an American mathematician, a professor at Pennsylvania State University, and a Sloan Research Fellow. She is known for her work on mathematical neuroscience, including the applications of mathematics in both theoretical and computational neuroscience. Her recent work is funded by the BRAIN Initiative. She is an associate editor at SIAGA, a SIAM journal on applied algebra and geometry and on the editorial board at Physical Review Research.
Monika Schleier-Smith is an American experimental physicist studying many-body quantum physics by precisely assembling systems of ultracold atoms. Her research helps connect the world of theoretical and experimental physics. These atomic, molecular, and optical physics (AMO) engineered systems have applications in quantum sensing, coherent control, and quantum computing. Schleier-Smith is an associate professor of physics at Stanford University, a Sloan Research Fellow, and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award recipient. Schleier-Smith also serves on the board of directors for the Hertz Foundation. She also works to improve education through speaking and serving on panels.
Jennifer (Jen) Dionne is an American scientist and pioneer of nanophotonics. She is currently senior associate vice provost of research platforms at Stanford University, a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator, and an associate professor of materials science and engineering and by courtesy, of radiology. She serves as director of the Department of Energy's "Photonics at Thermodynamic Limits" Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC), which strives to create thermodynamic engines driven by light, and she leads the "Extreme Scale Characterization" efforts of the DOE's Q-NEXT Quantum Science Center. She is also an associate editor of the ACS journal Nano Letters. Dionne's research develops optical methods to observe and control chemical and biological processes as they unfold with nanometer scale resolution, emphasizing critical challenges in global health and sustainability.
Tim P. Vogels is a professor of theoretical neuroscience and research leader at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria. He is primarily known for his scholarly contributions to the study of neuronal plasticity related to learning and memory in the brain.
Adrienne Fairhall is a University Professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics and an adjunct Professor in the Departments of Physics and Applied Mathematics, as well as the director of the Computational Neuroscience Program at the University of Washington.
Tatyana Sharpee is an American neuroscientist. She is a Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where she spearheads a research group at the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory, with the support from Edwin Hunter Chair in Neurobiology. She is also an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Physics at University of California, San Diego. She was elected a fellow of American Physical Society in 2019.
Lisa Giocomo is an American neuroscientist who is a Professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Giocomo probes the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying cortical neural circuits involved in spatial navigation and memory.
Ilana B. Witten is an American neuroscientist and professor of psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University. Witten studies the mesolimbic pathway, with a focus on the striatal neural circuit mechanisms driving reward learning and decision making.
Kanaka Rajan is a computational neuroscientist in the Department of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School and founding faculty in the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University. Rajan trained in engineering, biophysics, and neuroscience, and has pioneered novel methods and models to understand how the brain processes sensory information. Her research seeks to understand how important cognitive functions — such as learning, remembering, and deciding — emerge from the cooperative activity of multi-scale neural processes, and how those processes are affected by various neuropsychiatric disease states. The resulting integrative theories about the brain bridge neurobiology and artificial intelligence.
