From 1978–1979 Sejnowski was a
postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biology at Princeton University with Alan Gelperin and from 1979–1981 he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Neurobiology at
Harvard Medical School with
Stephen Kuffler. In 1982, he joined the faculty of the Department of
Biophysics at the
Johns Hopkins University, where he achieved the rank of Professor before moving to
San Diego, California in 1988. He was an Investigator at the
Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 1991 to 2018. He has had a long-standing affiliation with the
California Institute of Technology, as a Wiersma Visiting Professor of Neurobiology in 1987, as a Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Scholar in 1993 and as a part-time Visiting Professor 1995–1998. In 2004, he was named the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute and the director of the Crick-Jacobs Center for Theoretical and Computational Biology.
Honours and awards Sejnowski received a Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1984 from the
National Science Foundation (NSF). He received the Wright Prize from the
Harvey Mudd College for excellence in
interdisciplinary research in 1996 and the
Hebb Prize for his contributions to
learning algorithms by the International Neural Network Society in 1999. He became a Fellow of the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2000 for fundamental advances in the theory and practice of neural networks and for contributions to computational neuroscience. In the same year, he also received their Neural Network Pioneer Award in 2002. In 2003, he was elected to the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars. He is a Senior Fellow of the
Design Futures Council. He was elected to the
National Academy of Medicine in 2008. In 2010, he was elected a
Member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and elected to the
National Academy of Engineering in 2011. In 2017, he was elected to the
National Academy of Inventors. These achievements place him in a group of only three living people to have been elected to all four of the national academies. In 2013, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2014. He was awarded the 2015
Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience from the
Society for Neuroscience. He received an honorary doctorate from the
University of Zurich in 2017. In 2022, he was awarded the
Gruber Neuroscience Prize. In 2024, he was awarded
The Brain Prize for pioneering work in theoretical neuroscience alongside
Larry Abbott and
Haim Sompolinsky. That same year, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science from Princeton University. He was appointed a Fellow of the
Royal Society as a Foreign Member in 2025.
Neural networks His research in
neural networks and
computational neuroscience has been pioneering. In the early 1980s, particularly following work by
John Hopfield, computer simulations of neural networks became widespread. Early applications, particularly by Sejnowski and
Geoffrey Hinton, demonstrated that simple neural networks could be made to learn tasks of at least some sophistication. In 1989, Sejnowski founded Neural Computation, published by the
MIT Press, the leading
journal in neural networks and computational neuroscience. He is also the President of the Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation, a
non-profit organization that oversees the annual
NeurIPS Conference. This interdisciplinary meeting brings together
researchers from many disciplines, including biology, physics,
mathematics, and
engineering. He co-invented the
Boltzmann machine with
Geoffrey Hinton and pioneered the application of learning algorithms to difficult problems in
speech (
NETtalk) and
vision. He and his postdoctoral fellow, Tony Bell, developed the infomax algorithm for
Independent Component Analysis (ICA) which has been widely adopted in machine learning, signal processing and data mining.
Research The long-range goal of Sejnowski's research is to understand the computational resources of
brains and to build linking principles from brain to
behavior using
computational models. This goal is being pursued with a combination of
theoretical and
experimental approaches at several levels of investigation ranging from the biophysical level to the
systems level.
Hippocampal and
cortical slice preparations are being used to explore the properties of single neurons and
synapses, including the precision of
spike firing and the influence of
neuromodulators. Biophysical models of
electrical and
chemical signal processing within neurons are used as an adjunct to
physiological experiments. New techniques have been developed for
modeling cell signaling using
Monte Carlo methods (MCell). The central issues being addressed are how
dendrites integrate synaptic signals in neurons, how networks of neurons generate dynamical patterns of activity, how
sensory information is represented in the cerebral cortex, how
memory representations are formed and
consolidated during
sleep, and how visuo-
motor transformations are adaptively organized. His laboratory has developed new methods for analyzing the sources for electrical and
magnetic signals recorded from the
scalp and
hemodynamic signals from functional
neuroimaging by
blind separation using ICA. The
EEGLAB public software which was as of 2012 the most popular software for processing EEG data was originally developed in his laboratory.
Symposia He has participated and spoken at the
Beyond Belief symposia in 2006 and 2007. He participated in the conference
Waking Up to Sleep at the Salk Institute in February 2007 (online video available).
Membership Sejnowski was a member of the Advisory Committee to the Director of the National Institutes of Health for the Brain Research through Application of Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, announced by President Obama on 2 April 2013. Their BRAIN 2025 report was released by NIH on 5 June 2014 and has been used to prioritize NIH BRAIN Initiative projects. He was previously part of a team of engineers and neuroscientists who developed the Brain Activity Map Project, which served as the template for the BRAIN Initiative.
Authorship In 1992, Sejnowski co-authored
The Computational Brain with Patricia Churchland and in 2002 the book
Liars, Lovers, and Heroes; What the New Brain Science Reveals About How We Become Who We are with Steven R. Quartz. His book,
The Deep Learning Revolution, was published by the
MIT Press in June 2018. His most recent book,
ChatGPT and the Future of AI: The Deep Language Revolution, was published by the
MIT Press in October 2024. He has co-created (with Professor Barbara Oakley) and teaches
Learning How to Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects, a
massive open online course offered on Coursera. The course had its first three runs in August and October 2014 and January 2015, when it attracted approximately 300,000 students. In 2015, enrollment in the course reached 1 million, a total of about 2 million students as of August 2017, 3 million students as of 2021, and 4 million students as of 2024. == References ==