Neurotech Workshop
If feasible, breakthroughs in frontier neurotechnology, such as brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) and whole brain emulations (WBEs), could offer numerous benefits, including life-saving medical applications to insights into consciousness and human flourishing. Frontier neurotechnology may also offer promising approaches to tackle the threat of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) by providing tools for humans to better collaborate or compete with AI systems or by offering insights into how to build more human-like AGI.
Progress in BCIs and WBEs has historically been bottlenecked by the sheer challenging nature of the scientific problems involved, institutional constraints, academic straight jackets, and a lack of funder appetite to support sci-fi sounding goals. However, recent advances in AI have not only made frontier neurotechnology more urgent as possible AI defense strategy, but also rapidly opened up new routes for neurotech progress.
Foresight Institute’s annual neurotech workshop gathers those advancing the frontier of neurotechnology to create common knowledge about capabilities in the field, align on goals, and coordinate on solving outstanding bottlenecks. Participants include a tightly curated set of 60 leading scientists, builders, programmers, funders, and institutional allies.
Format
The workshop features brief talks by selected speakers, and an unconference-style working group session for project collaborations. It closes with project proposal presentations that are eligible for funding by Foresight’s grants, and may be considered by other funders present at the meeting.
Your participation should offer new insights supporting your immediate work, lasting long-term collaborations on shared goals with leaders in the field, or the incubation of novel, fundable projects to drive progress at the frontier.
The workshop discussions are Chatham House Rule (don’t connect people to ideas when discussing them outside of this workshop), apart from some of the presentations which will be recorded.
Presenters
Alan Mardinly
Science
Amy Kruse
Satori Capital
Ann Kennedy
Scripps Research
Bobby Kasthuri
University of Chicago
David Sussillo
Meta Reality Labs
Gabriel Kreiman
Harvard Medical School
Gavin Morley
University of Warwick
Haleh Fotowat
Wyss Institute
Isaak Freeman
Boyden Lab
Jacques Carolan
ARIA
Jordan Matelsky
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Kirill Eves
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Maryam Shanechi
USC Viterbi
Mehdi Azabou
Columbia University
Michael Skuhersky
MIT
Sean Escola
Protocol Labs
Talmo Pereira
Salk Institute
Viren Jain
Participants
Andrew Woo
Protocol Labs
Anishur Rahman
University of Warwick
Aritra Kundu
Imperial College London
Ben Rapoport
Mt Sinai
Ben Woodington
Coherence Neuro
Bruce Hope
NIDA IRP
Christina Maher
The University of Sydney
Diogo Lucerno
AE Studio
Edward Chang
Chang Lab, UCSF
Gert Cauwenberghs
UC San Diego
Gregg Wildenberg
University of Chicago
Guillem Monsó
Eindhoven University of Technology
Jack Kendall
Rain Neuromorphics
Jay Coggan
NeuroLinx
Joel Ye
CMU
Kanaka Rajan
Harvard
Kevin Boergens
The University of Illinois Chicago
Kwabena Boahen
Stanford University
Makoto Fukushima
Honda Research Institute Japan
Matt Angle
Paradromics, Inc.
Matthew Botvinick
Google DeepMind
Matthew von Hippel
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Max Kanwal
Maximilian Schons
Mikhail G. Shapiro
Caltech
Navid Farahani
Neuralink
Paris Brown
Duke Institute for Brain Sciences
Paul Nuyujukian
Stanford
Peter Yoo
Synchron
Peter Zhegin
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Philip Sabes
Integral Neuro
PK Douglas
Neurotrust AI
Richard Csaky
Sonera
Ryan Ly
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Sharena Rice
Sanmai Technologies PBC
Stephan Ihle
University of Chicago
Stephen Restaino
Catalyst Advisers
Suraj Gowda
Augmental
Surya Ganguli
Stanford University
Tom Oxley
Synchron, Inc.
Vikash Gilja
UC San Diego
Xiao-Jing Wang
New York University
Yakov (Kobi) Gurkan
Bain Capital Crypto