ARNI Annual Retreat 2024
| On October 21-22, ARNI held its 2024 Annual Retreat, a two-day event bringing together our community from Columbia University and partner institutions to discuss last year’s research, education, and outreach achievements and address concerns and opportunities raised at our NSF site visit earlier in September. The retreat featured brainstorming sessions focused on strengthening research collaborations and identifying key questions and flagship projects in NeuroAI, ensuring that ARNI makes a lasting impact in the years to come. Highlights of the retreat were four keynote presentations from Blake Richards, Carl Vondrick, Tom Griffiths, and Kimberly Stachenfeld; a “speed dating” session to foster connections between neuroscientists, cognitive scientists and AI researchers; and an panel discussion on Engaging Industry Partners. The panel was moderated by ARNI co-PI Liam Paninski and included: David Schwab: Assistant Professor of Biology and Physics, CUNY/Chair of ARNI Industry Outreach & Knowledge Transfer Kim Stachenfeld: Research Scientist at Google DeepMind / Adjunct Assistant Professor of Neuroscience, Columbia/ZI Dan Wetmore: Research Scientist at Meta / Reality Labs Kyunghyun Cho: Professor of Computer Science & Data Science at NYU / Senior Director of Frontier Research at Genentech Research & Early Development (gRED)/ ARNI EAB member During the retreat our graduate students and postdoctoral fellows also launched their Emerging Researchers group, with the goal to coordinate trainee-led career development activities including peer-mentoring opportunities, seminars and workshops. A special, trainees-only social event provided a unique opportunity for ARNI students across ARNI’s geographies to connect and build their own network! |