News+

NeuroAI takes the stage at Kempner Institute symposium

The Frontiers in NeuroAI symposium, held both in-person at Harvard, and virtually through a live stream, brought together more than 1,000 researchers and trainees from 37 countries around the world who are defining a new scientific field.

Photos: Anna Olivella for the Kempner Institute

1 min read

The early years after the emergence of a new field are a dynamic and transformative time, when a new community coalesces around a set of scientific questions and a common vision for how to answer them. The field of NeuroAI, which brings together neuroscience and artificial intelligence, is currently in this period of expansion and bloom.

Last week, the Kempner Institute organized a showcase for this growing field: the Frontiers in NeuroAI symposium. This two-day gathering brought together more than 1,000 researchers and trainees from 37 countries around the world. Participants from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds — including neuroscience, psychology, machine learning, computer science, physics, robotics, and psychology — convened to share the newest data and analytical techniques related to the study of brains and their artificial counterparts.

The symposium, which took place at Harvard’s Science and Engineering Complex in Allston, MA, as well as virtually via a livestream feed, occasioned a kind of conversation between forms of intelligence — the brain on one side, which enables biological intelligence, and on the other side, a family of modern AI methods including artificial neural networks (ANNs).