2024 ARCS Scientist of the Year

TERRY SEJNOWSKI, PHD
Professor and Laboratory Head
Computational Neurobiology Laboratory
Francis Crick Chair
Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Distinguished Professor
Department of Neurobiology
University of California, San Diego

The members of ARCS Foundation are proud to present the San Diego Chapter’s 37th Scientist of the Year, Dr. Terry Sejnowski, one of the world’s most preeminent computer scientists and computational neuroscientists, whose visionary and ingenious work on neural networks laid the foundation for the machine learning and AI revolution that is taking the world by storm today.  

Dr. Sejnowski received his PhD in physics from Princeton University and was a postdoctoral fellow in neurobiology at Harvard Medical School before joining the faculty at Johns Hopkins, where he was a Professor of Biophysics. He then moved to San Diego to work at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies where he now holds the Francis Crick Chair and directs the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory.  Dr. Sejnowski is also a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Diego, where he co-directs the Institute for Neural Computation. 

The goal of Dr. Sejnowski’s research is to build linking principles from brain to behavior using a combination of theoretical and experimental approaches ranging from the biophysical to the systems level.  He has published over 500 scientific papers and 12 books, including The Deep Learning Revolution, published by the MIT Press in 2018, which explores the origins of modern artificial intelligence and its convergence with discoveries in brain science.  

Dr. Sejnowski is the President of the Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) Foundation, which organizes an annual conference that was the incubator for deep learning and was attended by over 26,000 researchers in machine learning and neural computation in 2020.  He is also the founding editor-in-chief of Neural Computation published by the MIT Press.

In recognition for his pioneering research, Dr. Sejnowski has received many honors over the years; most recently the 2024 Brain Prize, the world’s largest neuroscience award, as well as the NSF Young Investigators Award, the Wright Prize for interdisciplinary research from the Harvey Mudd College, the Neural Network Pioneer Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Hebb Prize from the International Neural Network Society, the Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience from the Society for Neuroscience, and the Gruber Neuroscience Prize.  

Dr. Sejnowski was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2008, to the National Academy of Sciences in 2010, and to the National Academy of Engineering in 2011. Then in 2017, he was elected to the National Academy of Inventors.  These achievements place him in a group of only three living people to have been elected to all four of the national academies.  
 

Scholar Alumnus Speaker

RANDALL KELLEY, PHD
Director of Data Sciences
Chewy.com
(ARCS Scholar Award 2007-2009, UC San Diego)

After receiving his Bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Virginia, Dr. Kelley started his career in the US Navy, first serving as the First Lieutenant for the USS Ross (Destroyer) and then as a Nuclear Engineering officer onboard the USS John C. Stennis (aircraft carrier). After completing five years of military service, Dr. Kelley attended UCSD and received his PhD in particle physics. He joined Harvard University's Center for the Fundamental Laws of Nature, completing a post-doctoral fellowship, and then joined the teaching faculty, where he focused on modernizing the physics curricula. After leaving Harvard, Dr. Kelley switched fields to machine learning and AI. In his current role, Dr. Kelley leads the data science and machine learning (ML) team at Chewy.com, building predictive ML/AI models to help Chewy meet their Pet Parents' needs.   Outside of work, Dr. Kelley referees soccer at the college and professional levels and enjoys bird-watching with his family.