Speakers
Prof. Santanu Chaudhury
Director, Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur
Professor, IIT Delhi (On lien)
Former Director, CSIR-CEERI Pilani
Title of the talk : Connectomics and Artificial Intelligence
Abstract
Connectomics, study of connectomes: comprehensive maps of connections within an
organism's nervous system, typically its brain or eye. The talk touches upon techniques
to understand brain connections from brain imaging data using machine learning, and
how understanding of the connectomes can lead to implementation of artificial general
intelligence.
About The Speaker
Professor Santanu Chaudhury, Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Delhi,
has assumed charge as Director, IIT Jodhpur, on 10 December 2018. Professor Chaudhury
holds B.Tech. (Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering) and Ph.D.
(Computer Science & Engineering) Degrees from IIT Kharagpur.
Professor Chaudhury joined as Faculty Member in the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Delhi, in 1992. He was Dean, Under-Graduate Studies at IIT Delhi. He has served as Director of CSIR-CEERI, Pilani, during 2016-18. Professor Chaudhury is a recipient of the Distinguished Alumnus award from IIT Kharagpur.
Professor Chaudhury is a Fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineers (INAE) and National Academy of Sciences (NAS). He is a Fellow of International Association Pattern Recognition (IAPR). He was awarded the INSA (Indian National Science Academy) Medal for Young Scientists in 1993. He received ACCS-CDAC award for his research contributions in 2012.
A keen researcher and a thorough academic, Professor Chaudhury has about 300 publications in peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings, 15 patents and 4 authored/edited books to his credit.
Prof. Neeraj Jain
Director, National Brain Research Centre
Title of the talk : Intelligence: A neurobiologist perspective
About The Speaker
Professor Neeraj Jain did his Post-Doctoral research work with Prof. Jon Kaas at
Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA. He worked on the organization and plasticity of the
somatosensory system, and continued at Vanderbilt as Research Assistant Professor
before moving to National Brain Research Centre, Manesar, near New Delhi, India, where
he is currently a Professor and the Director.
His research interests include organization and information processing in the primate and rodent sensorimotor system. Current research focus of his laboratory is on determining how brains reorganize following injuries to the spinal cord and its perceptual and behavioural consequences. The lab is also interested in interventions such as stem cell transplantation to improve recoveries from spinal cord injuries and developing assistive devices for patients using brain-machine interface.
Prof. Manas Kumar Mandal
Distinguished Visiting Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
Title of the talk : How knowledge is acquired, represented, stored, processed, transferred and retrieved
Abstract
The aim of the talk is to highlight the transdisciplinary nature of cognitive science that best explains the Science of Intelligence, and the respective roles of behavior science, neuroscience and computation science in the understanding of the Science of Intelligence.
About The Speaker
Professor Manas Kumar Mandal’s research contribution to the field of psychological
science spanned over 35 years with primary focus on affect processing in the brain, in
general, and in schizophrenia, in particular. His doctoral work on affect (emotion)
processing in schizophrenia has been an original work that paved the way for the
formulation many research hypotheses later. Dr. Mandal continued his endeavour in later
part of his research in uncovering the role of cerebral hemispheres in emotion
processing. The input about cerebral lateralization was drawn from his earlier work in
which he proposed that the right hemisphere activity that regulates emotion processing
may be intact in schizophrenia. While at the Indian Institute of Technology – Kharagpur,
Dr. Mandal pursued the domain of behavioural neuroscience in normal human behavior,
in which he explored the difficulties faced by the left and mixed (clumsy) handers in the
society. His researches let us know what percentage of the left handers are found in
India, what makes a left hander switch handedness pattern, why the left handers are
more prone to accidents than the right handers, etc. As the Director of Defense Institute
of Psychological Research (DRDO), Dr. Mandal engaged himself in a large number of
activities towards the human performance development of the community of armed /
paramilitary forces (National Security Guards, CRPF, etc.). Noteworthy, amongst these
include (a) getting the best cadet for the armed / paramilitary forces through scientifically
developed selection system, (b) analyzing critical behavior like mob hysteria or terrorism,
(c) imparting mass counseling for man-made and natural disasters, (d) reducing the
incidence of self-defeating behaviours in soldiers like suicide and fratricide, etc.
Prof. Laxmidhar Behera
Poonam and Prabhu Goel Chair Professor
Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur
Title of the talk : Can we build conscious machines?
Abstract
It is assumed that all living beings are conscious machines. Can we build such a conscious machine that will be as natural as living beings? Applications like Alexa and Siri have made us believe that conscious machines are being built. Artificial Intelligence in its new incarnation is making wave across the world for being able to make machines intelligent. In spite of these signs of progress, the debate on ‘what consciousness is’ is very much on. The philosophical deliberations, scientific empirical pieces of evidence and first-person perspectives are subject matters of such debates. In this talk, the speaker defined the hard problem of consciousness and reflects upon the current state of AI machines. Through empirical pieces of evidence, the speaker shall explain the bottlenecks in solving the hard problem. It will be argued that the consciousness is not an emerging phenomenon but a motive force that drives creativity in a human. Based on these lines, the speaker proposes a method to build an artificial conscious machine.
About The Speaker
Professor Laxmidhar Behera is working as the Professor at IIT Kanpur having research and
teaching experience of more than 23 years. He has received the BSc (engineering) and
MSc (engineering) degrees from NIT Rourkela in 1988 and 1990, respectively. He received
the PhD degree from IIT Delhi in 1996. He pursued the postdoctoral studies in the German
National Research Center for Information Technology, GMD, Sank Augustin, Germany,
during 2000-2001. Previously, he has worked as an assistant professor at BITS Pilani
during 1995- 1999 and as a reader at Intelligent Systems Research Center (ISRC), the
University of Ulster, the United Kingdom during 2007-2009. He has also worked as a
visiting researcher/professor at FHG, Germany, and ETH, Zurich, Switzerland. He is one of
the pioneers in the field of AI-based autonomous robotics. His work lies in the
convergence of machine learning, control theory, robotic vision and heterogeneous
robotic platforms. He has received more than INR 18 crore research grants to support his
research activities - the recent one being IGCST International grant. He has established
industrial collaboration with TCS, Renault Nissan, Wipro and ADNOC, Abu Dhabi while
making significant technological development in the areas such robotics based warehouse
automation, vision and drone guided driver assistance system, and drone guided pipeline
inspection systems. He has published more than 280 papers in Journals and Conference
Proceedings. He is a Fellow of INAE and Senior Member of IEEE. He is one of the technical
committee members on Robotics and Intelligent Systems in IEEE SMC society. His other
research interests include intelligent control, semantic signal/music processing, neural
networks, control of cyber-physical systems and cognitive modelling.
Prof. Pawan Sinha
Professor of Vision and Computational Neuroscience
MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Title of the talk : Can we build conscious machines?
About The Speaker
Professor Pawan Sinha is a tenured professor of vision and computational neuroscience
in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. He received his undergraduate
degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi and his
Masters and doctoral degrees in Artificial Intelligence from the Department of Computer
Science at MIT. He has also had extended research stays at the University of California,
Berkeley, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, the Sarnoff Research Center in Princeton, and
the Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany.Professor Pawan Sinha is a tenured professor of vision and computational neuroscience
in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. He received his undergraduate
degree in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi and his
Masters and doctoral degrees in Artificial Intelligence from the Department of Computer
Science at MIT. He has also had extended research stays at the University of California,
Berkeley, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, the Sarnoff Research Center in Princeton, and
the Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany.
Prof. Sinha’s research interests span neuroscience, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and public health. Using a combination of experimental and computational modeling techniques, research in his laboratory focuses on understanding how the human brain learns to interpret and recognize complex sensory signals, such as images and videos. Prof. Sinha's experimental work on these issues involves studying healthy individuals and also those with neurological disorders such as autism. The goal is not only to derive clues regarding the nature and development of human visual skills, but also to create more powerful and robust AI systems.
Prof. Sinha founded Project Prakash in 2005 with the twin objectives of providing treatment to children with severe visual impairments and also understanding mechanisms of learning and plasticity in the brain. This project has provided insights into several fundamental questions about brain function (even some that had remained open for the past three centuries) while also transforming the lives of many blind children by bringing them the gift of sight. Prof. Sinha is a recipient of the Pisart Vision Award from the Lighthouse Guild, the inaugural Asia Game Changers Award, the PECASE – US Government’s highest award for young scientists, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship in Neuroscience, the John Merck Scholars Award for research on developmental disorders, the Jeptha and Emily Wade Award for creative research, the Troland Award from the National Academies, the Distinguished Alumnus Award from IIT Delhi, and the Oberdorfer Award from the ARVO Foundation. He is a founder of Imagen Inc, a company that applies insights regarding human image processing to challenging real-world machine vision problems. Imagen was the winner of the MIT Entrepreneurship competition. Prof. Sinha was named a Global Indus Technovator, and was also inducted into the Guinness Book of World Records for creating the world’s smallest reproduction of a printed book.
Prof. V. Srinivasa Chakravarthy
Professor, Department of Biotechnology
Indian Institute of Technology Madras
Title of the talk : Simplifying the brain
Abstract
Brain is often touted as “one of the most complex objects in the universe,” a perfectly
unscientific statement considering our ignorance of the nature of “objects” found all
over the universe. In this talk, the speaker argues that part of the reason behind this
undue “complexification” of the brain lies in the profoundly descriptive traditions of
biology. With the availability of sophisticated measurement tools, - and the big data
revolution in the air, -currently there is movement to generate mountains of brain
data without making a commensurate effort to develop elegant brain theories that
can explain the data. By separating principles from details, engineers create and
master complex systems. The brain is no different.
As a demonstration of how it is possible to develop simple brain theories/models that
can explain diverse functions of brain systems, the speaker outlines his lab’s (CNS
Lab) decade-long work in a brain system called the Basal Ganglia, a part of the brain
associated with Parkinson’s disease. Next the speaker describes the CNS lab’s work
on spatial navigation functions of another brain system called the hippocampus.
Discovery of the “spatial cells” of the hippocampus was awarded the Nobel prize in
2014. The CNS lab had developed a simple model that can explain a wide variety of
phenomena related to spatial navigation in 2d (in rats and mice) and in 3D (in bats).
Taking the above work to its logical consummation, the speaker outlines his lab’s
plans to build a reduced model of the whole brain called the MESOBRAIN. The
MESOBRAIN, once realized in software and hardware, is expected to have immense
applications in medicine and engineering.
About The Speaker
V. Srinivasa Chakravarthy is a professor in the Department of Biotechnology, IIT
Madras. He obtained his BTech from IIT Madras, MS /PhD from the University of
Texas at Austin. His received postdoctoral training in the neuroscience department
at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston. The Computational Neuroscience Lab (CNS
Lab) that he heads works on developing models of the basal ganglia, spatial
navigation, stroke rehabilitation and neurovascular coupling. He is the author of
two books in neuroscience. He is the inventor of a novel script called Bharati, a
unified script for Indian languages.
Dr. Sharba Bandopadhyay
Assistant Professor, Electronics & Electrical Communication Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur
Title of the talk : Auditory cortical development – impact of rarestimuli: experiments and theory
Abstract
Important and salient sensory stimuli occur with low probability and are rare, while high probability
stimuli, occurring repeatedly, are usually of less importance and are ignored by an organism. Sensory
cortical circuitry development is activity dependent and hence is based on the sensory environment
to which an animal is exposed early during development. Particularly in the auditory system, altering
the natural auditory environment during a specific period, the critical period, of early development
can remarkably alter cortical circuitry and organization. A crucial player in development of cortical
circuits is the subplate. Subplate neurons (SPNs), the first born cortical neurons, transient in nature,
play an important role in sculpting thalamo-cortical inputs and hence functional cortical circuitry and
organization. With a new auditory exposure paradigm before the established auditory critical period
(before ear canal opening, ECO) using low probability salient/deviant stimuli in the early auditory
environment, we show that the functional auditory cortical (ACX) responses are remarkably altered
into adulthood, in a manner specific to the deviant or rare exposure stimulus. The observed plasticity
is an outcome of the unique deviant detection properties we find of SPNs, before ECO, with strong
selectivity to the rare stimulus. These ages are equivalent to gestational week 25 in humans,
suggesting prenatal experience affecting sensory development. A computational network model
derived from our experimental results, with spike timing dependent plasticity shows how such long
term plasticity can occur. Further, theoretically, using mutual information maximization and sparse
coding principles, we show that the outcome of early exposure with our exposure paradigm can be
predicted theoretically. Our results thus suggest revision of the established timelines and concept of
auditory critical period and may generalize to other sensory systems.
About The Speaker
Sharba Bandyopadhyay did his BTech (1999) in Electronics and Electrical Communication
Engineering, IIT Kharagpur, India. He then did his MSE (2001) and PhD (2007) in Biomedical
Engineering from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA, respectively from the School of
Engineering and School of Medicine. Sharba’s Master’s Thesis was on speech coding in the auditory
nerve and his doctoral work was on spectral and temporal coding properties of neurons in the
cochlear nucleus. Following his PhD he joined the Institute of Systems Research and Department of
Biology at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA as a postdoctoral fellow and worked on
the sound encoding properties of the auditory cortex and rapid and developmental plasticity in the
auditory cortex. He later continued at UMD as Research faculty (2009-2012). At UMD, Sharba
worked on answering questions about auditory encoding and plasticity using in-vivo and in vitro
2-photon Ca imaging, 2-photon single neuron stimulation and electrophysiology. With a Wellcome
Trust DBT Fellowship, Sharba moved to India to start his own lab. After short a stay at NBRC India,
he moved to IIT Kharagpur and is an Assistant Professor in E&ECE from 2015. His research interests
include developmental plasticity at the neuronal micro-circuit level and neurodevelopmental
disorders. Other than research, Sharba also teaches Neuroscience to Engineering students and
other Electrical Engineering and Electrical Communication courses.
Registration
Please register here! (Deadline: 15 January, 2020)
Schedule
Venue: LHB 105 (Ground Floor), Lecture Hall Building, IIT Jodhpur
All attendees are requested to arrive by 9 am on 18 January and attend all the talks on both days.
| Day 1 / 18 January 2020 | ||
|---|---|---|
| 9:00 – 9:30 am | Inauguration :: Smt. Mugdha Sinha, Secretary to Government Department of Science and Technology, Govt. Rajasthan | |
| 9:30 – 10:30 am | Opening Remarks
:: Prof. Santanu Chaudhury, Director, IIT Jodhpur
Connectomics and Artificial Intelligence |
|
| 10:30 – 11:30 am | Prof. Neeraj Jain, Director, National Brain Research Centre
Intelligence: A neurobiologist perspective |
|
| 11:30 am – 12:00 pm | Tea break | |
| 12:00 – 1:00 pm |
Prof. Manas Kumar Mandal, Distinguished Visiting Professor, Dept. of HSS,
Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
How knowledge is acquired, represented, stored, processed, transferred and retrieved |
|
| 1:00 – 2:00 pm |
Prof. Laxmidhar Behera, Poonam and Prabhu Goel Chair Professor,
Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Can we build conscious machines? |
|
| 2:00 – 3:00 pm | Lunch | |
| 3:00 – 4:00 pm | Teaser presentation and Poster Symposium | |
| 4:00 – 4:30 pm | Tea break | |
| 4:30 – 6:30 pm | Panel Discussion | |
| 8:00 pm | Workshop Dinner | |
| Day 2 / 19 January 2020 | ||
| 9:30 – 10:30 am |
Prof. Pawan Sinha, Professor of Vision and Computational Neuroscience,
MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Cambridge
Deriving insights regarding visual learning from human studies |
|
| 10:30 – 11:30 am | Tea Break | |
| 11:30 – 11:45 am |
Prof. Srinivasa Chakravarthy, Professor, Department of Biotechnology, Indian
Institute of Technology, Madras
Simplifying the brain |
|
| 11:45 am – 12:30 pm |
Dr. Sharba Bandyopadhyay, Assistant Professor, Electronics and Electrical
Communication Engineering, IIT Kharagpur
Auditory cortical development – impact of rare stimuli: experiments and theory |
|
| 12:30 – 1:30 pm | Valedictory | |
| 1:30 pm | Lunch | |
Organizing Committee
Patron
Prof. Santanu Chaudhury
Director, IIT Jodhpur
Coordinator
Dr. Ankita Sharma (IIT Jodhpur)
Dr. Tapan Gandhi (IIT Delhi)
Treasurer
Dr. Ankita Sharma
Mr. Srinivas Dwivedi
Scientific Committee
Dr. Rajlaxmi Chouhan
Dr. Sushmita Jha
Dr. Sumit Kalra
Dr. Hari Narayanan
Dr. Sushmita Paul
Mr. Hanuman Singh
Media and PR
Dr. Sumit Kalra
Dr. Sushmita Jha
Mr. Dheerendra Yadav
Travel and Hospitality
Dr. Hari Narayanan
Dr. Sushmita Paul
Mr. Darsh Khatwani
Ms. Apeksha Mathur
Ms. Trilotama Singh
Guidelines for the Poster Session
Poster session would give attendees an opportunity to present their work to a large audience and receive valuable feedback. The session includes a 1-minute Teaser presentation (slide) followed by a 1-hour Poster presentation. Please note these instructions carefully:
Poster details and Teaser Submission
Please prepare a teaser of your presentation (1 slide) containing title, name, affiliations, and a brief description of your work not exceeding 1 minute. The teaser template can be found here.
The poster title, presenter and abstract (less than 200 words) along with teaser slide (only in PDF format) must be submitted online at: Poster Registration by Friday, Jan 17, 2020.
The poster must be in Portrait Orientation (Vertical) and can have a maximum size A0 (33.11 x 46.81 inches). An example is shown below:
Designing the Poster
Beginners can design their posters in MS PowerPoint by giving slide dimensions not exceeding A0 (33.11 x 46.81 inches).
The title of your poster should appear at the top with letters about 25 mm high. Below the title, put the author name(s) and affiliation(s). The flow of your poster should be from the top left to the bottom right. Use color for highlighting and to make your poster more attractive. Use pictures, diagrams, figures, etc., rather than text wherever possible. The smallest text on your poster should be at least 9 mm high, and the important points should be in a larger size. Use a sans-serif font to make the print easier to read from a distance. High-resolution logos of IITJ and IITD for poster footer may be found here.
During the WorkshopThe posters must be printed and brought to the workshop by the authors. Posters must put be up as early as possible, at least 30 minutes prior to the start of the poster session in the designated space. Push pins will be available to mount the poster. If you have any difficulty, please contact the poster session chair/volunteers.
Please prepare a 5-minute presentation of your work, concentrating on the key points, and be ready to interact with the audience that approaches your poster. You must remain present for the entire duration of the poster session.
Best Poster Prizes will be given to the top three posters of the event.
For Poster Session, please contact: Dr. Rajlaxmi Chouhan (rajlaxmichouhan@iitj.ac.in)
Contact
Jodhpur
NH 65, Nagaur Road, Karwad,
Jodhpur 342037 India