Kanaka Rajan
Associate Professor at Harvard & Kempner Institute. Applying computational frameworks & machine learning to decode multi-scale neural processes. Marathoner. Rescue dog mom. rajanlab.com
- New paper for #neurips2025! AI models adjust millions of internal settings to get better at a task. But how are these adjustments determined? For decades, we've mostly figured this out through trial & error. We took a different approach...🧵 (1/6) 🔗 openreview.net/forum?id=oMi...
- Standard learning methods only ask what the next best step is & take it. We reframed learning as navigating a landscape, where the goal is to find the best path over many steps. This lets us ask a new question: what's the optimal way to navigate? 🗺️ (2/6)
- The answer depends on your constraints, like how far ahead you can plan, how much of the landscape you can see, and what kinds of moves you can make. Our framework can derive the optimal strategy in each case. (3/6)
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View full threadEnormous thanks to John Vastola for leading this work, @gershbrain.bsky.social for the collaboration & @harvardmed.bsky.social, @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social for their support ✨ Read the full paper here & let us know what you think: openreview.net/forum?id=oMi... (6/6)
- Celebrating the Rajan Lab’s papers at #NeurIPS2025! Stop by to chat with these talented students and postdocs 🎉
- Reposted by Kanaka RajanTo identify the most transformative tools and technologies in the past five years, @thetransmitter.bsky.social surveyed readers and contributors and worked with a market-research firm to interview neuroscientists around the world. See what they had to say: bit.ly/3LYTNoB #StateOfNeuroscience
- Reposted by Kanaka Rajan📍Excited to share that our paper was selected as a Spotlight at #NeurIPS2025! arxiv.org/pdf/2410.03972 It started from a question I kept running into: When do RNNs trained on the same task converge/diverge in their solutions? 🧵⬇️
- Awesome work co-led by my student @annhuang42.bsky.social and @neurostrow.bsky.social on disentangling, then comparing recurrent and externally driven dynamics! Look out for more incredible work from @annhuang42.bsky.social coming up at NeurIPS 👀
- Our next paper on comparing dynamical systems (with special interest to artificial and biological neural networks) is out!! Joint work with @annhuang42.bsky.social , as well as @satpreetsingh.bsky.social , @leokoz8.bsky.social , Ila Fiete, and @kanakarajanphd.bsky.social : arxiv.org/pdf/2510.25943
- Congrats to Ann Huang for an excellent presentation at last week's @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social all-hands! 👏 Ann shared exciting updates about our InputDSA tool - more to come soon. Thrilled she had the chance to present to our engaged and supportive community.
- (1/8) New paper from our team! Yu Duan & Hamza Chaudhry introduce POCO, a tool for predicting brain activity at the cellular & network level during spontaneous behavior. Find out how we built POCO & how it changes neurobehavioral research 👇 arxiv.org/abs/2506.14957
- (2/8) POCO was trained on spontaneous & task-specific behavior data from zebrafish, mice, & C. elegans. It combines a local forecaster with a population encoder capturing brain-wide patterns, so we track each neuron individually AND how the whole brain affects each cell 🧠
- (3/8) POCO forecasts how the brain will behave up to ~15 seconds into the future across behavioral data & species 🔮 After pre-training, POCO’s speed & flexibility allow it to adapt to new recordings with minimal fine-tuning, opening the door for real-time applications.
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View full thread(8/8) To apply POCO to your own work, find our open source code on github below 👇 github.com/yuvenduan/POCO
- Thanks for having me at @camp_course and the @iitmadras Brain Center during my visit to India this summer!🥭 It was lovely to be back home, and a pleasure to work with the young scientists there who are finding their path in computational neuroscience 🧠
- Brilliant piece by @mattperich.bsky.social on neural manifolds 🌟 His essay in @thetransmitter.bsky.social shows how this view changes the game in computational neuroscience, reproducing behavioral flexibility within finite neural constraints 🧠 www.thetransmitter.org/neural-dynam...
- Check out @jordancollver.bsky.social’s great illustration of modular RNNs training to work like a bio-brain🦾🧠 Thanks to Crearte for featuring our collaboration! www.instagram.com/crearte.ca/p...
- (1/7) New preprint from Rajan lab! 🧠🤖 @ryanpaulbadman1.bsky.social & Riley Simmons-Edler show–through cog sci, neuro & ethology–how an AI agent with fewer ‘neurons’ than an insect can forage, find safety & dodge predators in a virtual world. Here's what we built Preprint: arxiv.org/pdf/2506.06981
- (2/7) Introducing ForageWorld: Each session spawns a large arena with lakes, predators & food patches that deplete over time. The AI agent must juggle hunger, thirst & fatigue in this virtual space. The agent can only "see" a small patch around itself, so no bird’s-eye view.
- (3/7) For the agent’s “brain,” we used a lean recurrent network: 4096 units (<0.2% of the size of an ant brain), with only 10% connectivity & we let RL teach it what to do by trial & error.
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View full thread(7/7) Congrats to Riley & Ryan on this work. Also huge thanks to collaborators Felix Berg, @raymondrchua.bsky.social, John Vastola, @joshlunger.bsky.social, Billy Qian & everyone who helps us kick the tires.
- New work incoming at #RLDM2025 🤖 🐟 While we look forward to sharing our research, I'm mindful that many colleagues, including the authors of our second abstract, can't attend due to funding & travel issues. Read the extended abstracts: rldm.org/program-2025/ #neuroskyence
- It was such a pleasure to host @kordinglab.bsky.social at @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social last week - thank you for joining us!
- Big day for the Rajan lab at @harvardmed.bsky.social Friday Seminar Series 🌟 @satpreetsingh.bsky.social & Siyan Zhou gave outstanding talks on collective behaviors in artificial fish schools & disordered attractors in mice. I’m so proud of their work! 🤖🧠
- Reposted by Kanaka RajanIn his new book, published today, Nachum Ulanovsky calls on the field to embrace naturalistic conditions and move away from overcontrolled experiments. #neuroskyence www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neur...
- Headed to #Cosyne2025? Don't miss this workshop led by Rajan lab postdocs @satpreetsingh.bsky.social, @chingfang.bsky.social & @gzmozd.bsky.social on how complex tasks, agent-based models & theory-experiment cross-talk help us study how the brain works 🧠🤖 #neuroskyence @cosynemeeting.bsky.social
- Reposted by Kanaka RajanAre you at @CosyneMeeting? Stop by the poster session today to see work from the #KempnerInstitute! #COSYNE2025 @cpehlevan.bsky.social @naoshigeuchida.bsky.social @blsabatini.bsky.social @kanakarajanphd.bsky.social @gershbrain.bsky.social
- Big showing from the Rajan Lab at @cosynemeeting.bsky.social! We have posters on everything from multi-agent social foraging to neuromodulated neural networks. Catch us in Poster Sessions 2 & 3 🧠🤖 #Cosyne2025 #NeuroAI #CompSci #neuroskyence
- Attended my first @cziscience.bsky.social #Neuroscience 2025 Meeting 🧠 Grateful to speak alongside such amazing theorists, see old & new friends & connect across academia & industry Shoutout to @bjmarlin.bsky.social, @muraronara.bsky.social , @erinmgibson.bsky.social & all these wonderful folks🌟
- Reposted by Kanaka RajanWith insights from SWC Seminar speakers Andrew Alexander (UCSB), @kanakarajanphd.bsky.social ( @harvard.edu ), Teresa Guillamón Vivancos (Instituto de Neurociencias de Alicante), @hannahpayne.bsky.social ( @columbiauniversity.bsky.social ) André Fenton (New York University)
- Reposted by Kanaka RajanWhat do neural oscillations like theta and gamma do? 14 leading experts explain the role of rhythms in the brain from coordinating neural processes to encoding memories and more. Read more: www.sainsburywellcome.org/web/blog/mak... #BrainAwarenessWeek
- Reposted by Kanaka RajanCould worm brains and ideas from neuroscience lead to better #AI? I just got my copy of a story I wrote about #neuromorphic computing for @sciencenews.bsky.social sciencenews.org/article/brai... 🧪 Thanks @subutaiahmad.bsky.social @kanakarajanphd.bsky.social & many others who shared their expertise
- Enjoyed sharing our work on electric fish with @dryohanjohn.bsky.social⚡🐟 Their electric "conversations" help us build models to discover neural mechanisms of social cognition. Work led by Sonja Johnson-Yu & @satpreetsingh.bsky.social with Nate Sawtell kempnerinstitute.harvard.edu/news/what-el...
- Huge thanks to our other collaborators Fede Pedraja, Aaron Walsman, Denis Turcu, @nsaphra.bsky.social & Pratyusha Sharma. Thank you also to @kempnerinstitute.bsky.social for helping make our work possible 🧠🤖 #neuroskyence #NeuroAI
- Deeply honored to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers #PECASE. Thanks to the NIH funding and my incredible team who make our work pushing the boundaries of NeuroAI possible 🧠🤖 www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-up...
- Delighted to have a chance to contribute my thoughts to @thetransmitter.bsky.social’s debut book! I highlight how noise in the brain could actively shape cognition & serve as a model for adaptive AI. Thank you @nicolecrust.bsky.social for including me in your piece! #neuroscience 🧠🤖
- Reposted by Kanaka RajanMy essay features @manlius.bsky.social, @antihebbiann.bsky.social, @marinopagan.bsky.social, @pessoabrain.bsky.social, @kanakarajanphd.bsky.social, @crozell.bsky.social and many more - all looking fabulous. @rebeccasky.bsky.social and @thetransmitter.bsky.social team do such a terrific job!
- If you're interested in the future of #AI, the AE Global Summit on Open Problems for AI is tomorrow! 🤖 Join us to learn more about the biggest challenges in modern AI. I'm looking forward to discussing our work in #NeuroAI Register below 👇🏽Hope to see you there! www.algopreneurship.ai/register
- Reposted by Kanaka RajanJoint the Comp Neuro conversation go.bsky.app/K8hiHqeat://did:plc:ol3ktdavfnpxqgn3t65zd554/app.bsky.graph.starterpack/3lcgbk2wj222z
- Can't recommend this starter pack enough!
- This list likely reflects mainly my interests and circle, and I’m sure I’ve missed many people, but I gave it a try: (I’ll be slowly editing it until it reaches 150/150) go.bsky.app/7VFUkdn (also, I tried but couldn't remove my profile...)
- 👋🏽 Hi Bluesky! Happy to see so many more faces here. I’m an Associate Professor at Harvard and the Kempner Institute using AI and computational models to unlock the secrets of how our brains learn and make decisions across different scales 👩🏽🔬🧠🤖 #neuroskyence #academicsky www.rajanlab.com
- Reposted by Kanaka RajanMy new piece for @thetransmitter.bsky.social. Why is treating brain dysfunction so ENORMOUSLY challenging? Because it amounts to controlling a complex system. Drawing from the history of weather research, I pose the question: Can it even be done? www.thetransmitter.org/systems-neur...
- Reposted by Kanaka RajanWith thoughts from 14 experts, including: @manlius.bsky.social, @antihebbiann.bsky.social, @pessoabrain.bsky.social, @kanakarajanphd.bsky.social, @crozell.bsky.social. Would love to hear your thoughts as well! #neuroskyence, #complexity, 🧪
- Reposted by Kanaka RajanComments appreciated! But they are comparable insofar as some of our favorite models of the brain (like RNNs) are in fact chaotic, @kanakarajanphd.bsky.social journals.aps.org/pre/abstract... That's not to say that we shouldn't be optimistic about control (Kanaka is). But it will be hard.
- Tomorrow at 1pm in WCC 103 at SfN 2023 🧠🦑 I’ll share my story from engineering & physics to neuroscience, how computational models reveal novel mechanisms & make experimental predictions, and how neurocomics could help make my field more inclusive.
- Tomorrow at 3pm in Hall D at SfN 2023 ✨ SfNova with Ishmail Abdus-Saboor! I’ll talk about how advances in #AI and large scale brain data will enable computational neuroscience to answer big questions about cognition – and what the Rajan lab has discovered already!
- Looking forward to #SfN23 next month! I’ll be presenting in two sessions: ✨ SfNova (Sat. 11/11 @ 3pm w. Ishmail Abdus-Saboor) 🧠 Meet-the-Expert (Sun. 11/12 @ 1pm) Learn more: www.sfn.org/meetings/neu...
