Tomaso Poggio is one of the founders of computational neuroscience. He pioneered models of the fly’s visual system and of human stereovision, introduced regularization theory to computational vision, made key contributions to the biophysics of computation and to learning theory, and developed an influential model of recognition in the visual cortex.
Poggio is the Eugene McDermott Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Co-Director of the Center for Biological and Computational Learning, and Member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT. Since 2000 he has also been a member of the faculty of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Born in Genoa, Italy, in 1947 (and naturalized in 1994), he received his Doctor in Theoretical Physics from the University of Genoa in 1971 and was a Wissenschaftlicher Assistant at the Max Planck Institut für Biologische Kybernetik, Tüebingen, Germany, from 1972 until 1981 when he became Associate Professor at MIT. He is an honorary member of the Neuroscience Research Program, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Founding Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). He received several awards such as the Otto-Hahn-Medaille Award of the Max-Planck-Society; the Max Planck Research Award (with M. Fahle), from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; the MIT 50K Entrepreneurship Competition Award; the Laurea Honoris Causa from the University of Pavia in 2000 (Volta Bicentennial); the 2003 Gabor Award; the 2009 Okawa prize; and the 2009 Okawa prize and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellowship (2009). He is one of the most cited computational neuroscientists (with a h-index greater than 90 – based on Google Scholar).
Press
MIT News: CBMM co-hosts workshop on data representation
MIT News: Artificial-intelligence research revives its old ambitions
The New York Times: At High Speed, on the Road to a Driverless Future
Articles
Scholarpedia: Models of visual cortex
Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Technical Report: Throwing Down the Visual Intelligence Gauntlet
Perception: The Levels of Understanding framework, revised
Read about the other CAST Symposium Participants