Brokoslaw Laschowski

Dr. Brokoslaw Laschowski is a computational neuroscientist. He works as a Research Scientist and Principal Investigator at the University Health Network (i.e., the largest research hospital in Canada) and as an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, with appointments in Neuroscience and Mechanical Engineering. He also serves as the Director of the Computational Neuroscience Lab, a leading multidisciplinary research lab that explores the intersection of neuroscience and artificial intelligence. The long-term vision for his research is to discover fundamental principles of intelligence by reverse-engineering biological and artificial neural networks. Simply put, he studies the mechanisms underlying intelligence in both human and artificial brains—from neurons, to circuits, to algorithms, to cognition and behaviour.

Over the years, Dr. Laschowski has established a world-class research program focused on building new mathematical, computational, and machine learning models to reverse-engineer and/or decode the brain. Some examples include 1) deep learning models to model the visual information processing neural networks in the visual cortex, 2) neural decoding algorithms to predict speech and motor intent for brain-machine interfaces, and 3) reinforcement learning models to reverse-engineer how neural computations in the motor cortex control and optimize human movement. Taken together, his lab specializes in developing in silico brain models using large-scale neural and behavioural data to tackle grand challenges in computational neuroscience.

In addition to building a computational understanding of intelligence, one of the practical applications of his brain models is to develop autonomous robots and machines that can think and control themselves. To learn more, see the recent news article “Building robot brains." As a result of his innovative research, Dr. Laschowski has published in various high-impact journals, given invited talks at top international conferences, and has received competitive and external funding. His award-winning research has been featured in media outlets such as BBC, CBC, Forbes, and Science Magazine, and highlighted in a keynote talk by the President and CEO of NVIDIA and showcased to the South Korean President.

In addition to research, he has extensive experience supervising undergraduate and graduate students from diverse backgrounds, including computer science, engineering, neuroscience, and mathematics. Most notably, he is the Co-Founder and Director of the summer research program in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto for student refugees from Ukraine, funded by the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence. In summary, Dr. Laschowski is a computational neuroscientist with expertise in developing computational brain models to reverse-engineer the fundamental principles of human and machine intelligence.