Surya Ganguli, an associate professor of applied physics and associate director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, has earned a spot in the 2023 Schmidt Science Polymaths Program cohort. This prestigious recognition comes with an annual grant of $500,000 for up to five years to support Ganguli’s interdisciplinary research.
Utilizing the awarded grant, Ganguli aims to delve into an interdisciplinary research program, focusing on understanding interactions among nonlinear elements in neural networks. This research spans both biological and artificial systems, seeking to unravel the remarkable emergent computational capabilities they display.
At Stanford University, Ganguli currently leads the Neural Dynamics and Computation Lab and has previously contributed as a visiting researcher at Google and Meta AI.
Before his Stanford tenure, Ganguli served as a fellow at the Sloan-Swartz Center for theoretical neurobiology in the Keck Center at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). During this period, he received support from a career award through the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Interfaces in Science Program.
Ganguli’s academic journey includes a triple major at MIT in electrical engineering and computer science, physics, and mathematics. He achieved his doctoral degree in string theory from the Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics and the Theory Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
