Tomaso Armando Poggio (born 11 September 1947 in

Genoa Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian census, the Province of ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

), is the Eugene McDermott professor in the

Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences The Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, engages in fundamental research in the areas of brain and neural systems, and cognitive processes. The department ...

, an investigator at the

McGovern Institute for Brain Research The McGovern Institute for Brain Research is a research institute within MIT. Its mission is to understand how the brain works and to discover new ways to prevent or treat brain disorders. The institute was founded in 2000 by Patrick McGover ...

, a member of the

MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Lab ...

(CSAIL) and director of both the Center for Biological and Computational Learning at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

and th
Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines
a multi-institutional collaboration headquartered at the McGovern Institute since 2013.

Biography

Born in Genoa, Italy, and educated at Istituto Arecco, Tomaso Poggio completed his doctorate in

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

at the University of Genoa and received his degree in

Theoretical Physics Theoretical physics is a branch of physics that employs mathematical models and abstractions of physical objects and systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. This is in contrast to experimental physics, which uses experim ...

under professor A. Borsellino.

Research

His interdisciplinary research on the problem of

intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. More generally, it can be des ...

, between brains and computers, started at the Max Planck Institute in

Tübingen Tübingen (, , Swabian: ''Dibenga'') is a traditional university city in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, and developed on both sides of the Neckar and Ammer rivers. about one in three ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

in collaborations with Werner E. Reichardt, David C. Marr and Francis H.C. Crick, among others. He has made contributions to learning theory, to the computational theory of vision, to the understanding of the fly's visual system, and to the biophysics of computation. His recent work is focused on

computational neuroscience Computational neuroscience (also known as theoretical neuroscience or mathematical neuroscience) is a branch of neuroscience which employs mathematical models, computer simulations, theoretical analysis and abstractions of the brain to u ...

in close collaboration with several physiology labs, trying to answer the questions of how our visual system learns to see and recognize scenes and objects. He is one of the most cited computational neuroscientists. with contributions ranging from the biophysical and behavioral studies of the visual system to the computational analyses of vision and learning in humans and machines. With Werner E. Reichardt he characterized quantitatively the visuo-motor control system in the fly. With

David Marr (neuroscientist) David Courtenay Marr (19 January 1945 – 17 November 1980)
from the ''International Encyclopaedia of Social an ...

, he introduced the seminal idea of levels of analysis in computational neuroscience. He and Torre introduced regularization as a mathematical framework to approach the ill-posed problems of vision and the key problem of learning from data. The citation for the 2009 Okawa prize mentions his “…outstanding contributions to the establishment of computational neuroscience, and pioneering researches ranging from the biophysical and behavioral studies of the visual system to the computational analysis of vision and learning in humans and machines.” His research has always been interdisciplinary, between brains and computers. It is now focused on the mathematics of deep learning and on the computational neuroscience of the visual cortex.

Industry

Poggio is a former Corporate Fellow of

Thinking Machines Corporation Thinking Machines Corporation was a supercomputer manufacturer and artificial intelligence (AI) company, founded in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 1983 by Sheryl Handler and W. Daniel "Danny" Hillis to turn Hillis's doctoral work at the Massachusett ...

and a former director of PHZ Capital Partners, Inc., is a director of

Mobileye Mobileye Global Inc. is a company developing autonomous driving technologies and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) including cameras, computer chips and software. Mobileye was acquired by Intel in 2017 and went public again in 2022. Mobi ...

and was involved in starting, or investing in, several other high tech companies including Arris Pharmaceutical, nFX, Imagen, Digital Persona and DeepMind. Among his PhD students and post-docs are some of the today's leaders in the Science and in the Engineering of Intelligence, from Christof Koch (President and Chief Scientific Officer, Allen Institute) to Amnon Shashua (CTO and founder, Mobileye) and Demis Hassabis (CEO and founder, Deep Mind).

Honors and awards

Poggio is an honorary member of the Neuroscience Research Program, a member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

and a founding fellow of

AAAI The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is an international scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public understanding of artif ...

and a founding member of the

. He received the Laurea Honoris Causa in Computer Engineering from the

University of Pavia The University of Pavia ( it, Università degli Studi di Pavia, UNIPV or ''Università di Pavia''; la, Alma Ticinensis Universitas) is a university located in Pavia, Lombardy, Italy. There was evidence of teaching as early as 1361, making it one ...

for the Volta Bicentennial in 2000, the 200
Gabor Award
the 2009 Okawa Priz

and named in 2009 a Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsi ...

for “distinguished contributions to computational neuroscience, in particular, computational vision learning and regularization theory, biophysics of computation and models of recognition in the visual cortex”, and the 2014 Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience.

Notable students

Christof Koch Christof Koch ( ; born November 13, 1956) is a German-American neurophysiologist and computational neuroscientist best known for his work on the neural basis of consciousness. He is the president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for B ...

, President and Chief Scientific Officer,

Allen Institute for Brain Science The Allen Institute for Brain Science is a division of the Allen Institute, based in Seattle, Washington, that focuses on bioscience research. Founded in 2003, it is dedicated to accelerating the understanding of how the human brain works. Wit ...

* Amnon Shashua, CTO and founder,

Demis Hassabis Demis Hassabis (born 27 July 1976) is a British artificial intelligence researcher and entrepreneur. In his early career he was a video game AI programmer and designer, and an expert player of board games. He is the chief executive officer and ...

, CEO and founder of Google DeepMind

References

External links

The Center for Biological and Computational Learning (CBCL) at MITMcGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
{{DEFAULTSORT:Poggio, Tomaso Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science faculty Artificial intelligence researchers Italian cognitive neuroscientists Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Living people 1947 births University of Genoa alumni Italian computer scientists American computer scientists Computer vision researchers