Kevin Mitchell is Associate Professor of Genetics and Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin. He studies the genetic program specifying the wiring of the brain and its relevance to variation in human faculties, psychiatric disease and perceptual conditions like synaesthesia.

He is the author of “INNATE – How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are” (Princeton University Press, 2018), writes the Wiring the Brain blog and is on Twitter @WiringtheBrain. He is currently working on a new book an Agency for Princeton University Press.

Professor Foster is the Head of Oxford’s Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology, the founder and Director of the Sleep and Circadian Research Institute and is a Fellow of Brasenose College Oxford. His research addresses how circadian rhythms and sleep are generated and regulated and what happens when these systems fail as a result of societal pressures, ageing and disease. A key finding has been his discovery and characterisation of an unrecognised light-detecting system within the eye that regulates circadian rhythms and sleep and, most recently, the translation of these findings to the clinic. For his work, Professor Foster was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society in 2008, the Royal Society of Biology in 2011 and the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2013.  Russell was honoured by being appointed as a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 2015 for services to Science. Professor Foster has published over 270 scientific papers and has received multiple national and international awards, including most recently the “Daylight Prize”. He has co-written four popular science books and is working on his fifth for Penguin to be published in 2022.

Priya Panda is an assistant professor in the electrical engineering department at Yale University, USA. She is the recipient of the 2019 Amazon Research Award. Her research interests include neuromorphic computing, deploying robust and energy efficient machine intelligence.

Title of the Talk: Towards Robust and Energy-Efficient Spike Based Machine Intelligence with Algorithm-Hardware Co-Design

Abstract: Today, deep learning has empowered the digital age enabling ‘intelligence’ in almost all technology that surrounds us. However, the cost associated in terms of computing resources and energy consumption is very high.  In that regard, Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs), often referred to as the third generation of neural networks (or Neuromorphic Computing), have the potential of empowering low-power machine intelligence through sparse, event-driven computations. Note, however, today there does not exist good learning and inference techniques that can reap the potential benefits of SNNs.  In this talk, I will present an overview of the recent efforts in SNNs, in both algorithm and hardware (time permitting), addressing the limitations and advantages of spike-driven learning and computations.

Paul is currently Professor of Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics. He is the author of the bestselling books ‘Happiness by Design’ and ‘Happy Ever After’.

He is an expert on happiness, behaviour and public policy. He conducts original research into human behaviour and happiness, and increasingly the relationship between what we do and how we feel.

In this talk, he will illustrate how the stories we are told about how to live can make many of us miserable, and will discuss ways in which we can avoid these narrative traps and be a little bit happier.