Learning, adaptation, and adaptive behaviors - Ilya Nemenman: Theoretical Biophysics @ Emory

We are interested in understanding the How? and the What? of mechanisms and functions responsible for estimation, adapation, and learning on multiple timescales and in various systems. We believe that the problem of learning from examples is a universal problem faced by biological systems on all scales of organization. The problems, which live on the intersection of physics and biology, are universal, while solutions may be organism– specific. Focusing on physics-­style mathematical models of biological processes allows us to uncover phenomena that generalize across different living organisms – something that traditional empirical approaches cannot do alone. Correspondingly, we study learning and adaptation on cellular, neural, and behavioral scales, and have recently started to bring evolutionary adaptation into the same framework. In addition, we also work on fundamentals of learning theory. Specific questions include: To answer some of these questions, we need to understand first ho

We are interested in understanding the How? and the What? of mechanisms and functions responsible for estimation, adapation, and learning on multiple timescales and in various systems. We believe that the problem of learning from examples is a universal problem faced by biological systems on all scales of organization. The problems, which live on the intersection of physics and biology, are universal, while solutions may be organism– specific. Focusing on physics-­style mathematical models of biological processes allows us to uncover phenomena that generalize across different living organisms