News
Po-Chen Kuo wins internship opportunity at Microsoft Research in NYC
Po-Chen, from the Walker and Fairhall labs, was selected for a summer internship working in NYC with previous CNC Conectome speaker, AI researcher Ida Mommenejad, at Microsoft Research. Po-Chen will be working on AI interpretability. The project investigates schema operation and algorithmic grammar of reasoning in large language models (LLMs), with the goal of moving toward a structural understanding of reasoning that connects interpretability with computational theories of how schema can be implemented. [...]
Shanahan Foundation Fellowship changes leadership
The Shanahan fellowship community at UW thanks outgoing co-director Christof Koch for his stewardship of the Shanahan Fellows program, a joint endeavor between UW CNC and the Allen Institute that provides quantitatively trained PhD graduates the opportunity to dive into neuroscience via the Allen Institute’s amazing data resources. CNC affiliate Michael Buice will be taking up Christof’s former role. Welcome Michael!
NeuroAI 2026 August 20-21 – registration now open!
The sixth NeuroAI meeting will take place at the Allen Institute in Seattle on August 20-21, 2026. NeuroAI started as a collaborative meeting between researchers working on the NSF supported International Network on Bio-Inspired Computing. Since 2022, the meeting has grown to an annual intimate gathering of researchers interested in bridging neuroscience and artificial intelligence. The theme of this year's meeting is "multi-area interactions." Featured speakers include Matt Perich (University of Montreal and [...]
FUTURE TENSE: an evening salon about neuroscience, AI and society
The CNC will be hosting 2 upcoming evening public lectures in our series, FUTURE TENSE, where world-class speakers discuss topics around themes of neuroscience, AI and how society may roll with developments in these fields. Stage discussions are followed by a gathering over drinks and snacks. Previous speakers include science fiction writers, filmmakers, scientists, philosophers and technologists. This quarter we are thrilled to host the philosopher of science, Justin Smith-Ruiu, and technology commentator [...]
Professor Adrienne Fairhall elected to the National Academy of Sciences
Congratulations to Adrienne Fairhall, Professor of Neurobiology and Biophysics, Adjunct Professor of Applied Mathematics, and Adjunct Professor of Physics, who has just been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Prof. Fairhall has made foundational contributions to the problem of the neural code — deciphering the set of patterns that the brain uses to compute — and to the questions of how these patterns arise through the nonlinear dynamics of neurons and networks. [...]
Fairhall lab and Columbia University researchers join forces on groundbreaking study tracking dopamine in birdsong learning
When we learn a new skill, we often get feedback on our performance– rewards for good behavior, debriefs from a sports coach, or corrections from a piano teacher while stumbling through our pieces. In general, though, we improve many skills without anyone telling us how we are doing: we know when we’ve made a mistake when we’re practicing a song alone. Our own “internal critic” evaluates and signals our errors, somehow guiding us [...]