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The Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit was established at UCL by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation in July 1998 to provide a unique opportunity for a critical mass of theoreticians to interact closely with one another and with other UCL research groups. The unit is one of the first centres in the world to bring together the fields of theoretical neuroscience and machine learning, and our researchers have pioneered research into the mathematical underpinnings of learning, perception and action in biological and artificial systems.
The unit was established with Geoffrey Hinton (founding director 1998-2001; Turing Prize 2019, Nobel Prize in Physics 2024), Peter Dayan (1998-2018, director 2002-2017; Brain Prize 2017), Li Zhaoping (1998-2001) and Zoubin Ghahramani (1998-2005; Royal Society Milner Award 2021). Since then, faculty members have included Peter Latham, Maneesh Sahani, Yee Whye Teh (2011-2012), Arthur Gretton, Aapo Hyvaarinen (2016-2019), Peter Orbanz, Andrew Saxe, Agostina Palmigiano and Leena Chennuru Vankadara (to start in 2025).
Collaboration
In mid-2015 we moved from our home in Queen Square to Fitzrovia to create a collaborative partnership with the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour (SWC). The unit and SWC, both part of the Faculty of Life Sciences at UCL, work closely together, with parallel PhD programmes and one joint PhD programme, common day-to-day activities, and joint appointments and research projects that bring together theoretical/computational and experimental neuroscience. We are also part of the cross-faculty Centre for Computational Statistics and Machine Learning (CSML), and collaborate with other UCL research groups in neuroscience and machine Learning. In 2020, the unit joined the ELLIS Unit at UCL, part of the wider European Lab for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS), Europe's leading network for AI research. We have strong links with two other Gatsby Charitable Foundation-funded research centres: the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at Columbia University and the Gatsby Programme in Theoretical Neuroscience, Hebrew University.
Education and training
The unit runs two innovative, highly competitive four-year PhD programmes: Gatsby Unit PhD programme in Theoretical Neuroscience and Machine Learning and a joint PhD programme with SWC. We also offer pre-doctoral research experience and postdoctoral training fellowships (see Study and Work). The unit also runs the Gatsby Bridging Programme, a 7-week mathematics summer school. In addition, we host an external seminar series with talks by experts in the fields, and organise scientific workshops/schools (see, for example, MLSS 2019 and Analytical Connectionism 2023) as well as public/outreach events.
Culture
We are a unit of around 50 people, functioning as far as possible as a single large research group. This small size allows us to interact closely and frequently through regular research talks, journal clubs, lab meetings, external seminars and tea hours (with tea, snack and informal talks). On Friday afternoons we have joint tea hours with SWC. This strong cohesion is a defining characterising of the unit. We support flexible working and are committed to support the career development of our PhD students and postdoctoral fellows.
Alumni
Our alumni came from over 40 countries on six continents. Over 90% of these alumni work in science/research: 45% are Group Leaders, and ~30% work in research development in companies such as DeepMind (itself co-founded by two former postdocs, Demis Hassabis and Shane Legg), Reality Labs and Anthropic. Yasser Roudi and Misha Ahrens won the Eric Kandel Young Neuroscientist Prize in 2015 and 2019, respectively; Demis Hassabis was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Please see The Greater Gatsby page for a list of former faculty members, postdoctoral fellows, PhD students and professional services staff.
