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Rajesh P. N. Rao

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Rajesh Rao, 2019

Rajesh P. N. Rao (born 2 July 1970 in Madras, India) is the Director of the NSF Center for Neurotechnology (CNT) and the Cherng Jia and Elizabeth Yun Hwang Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle.[1]

Dr. Rao is a researcher in the fields of computational neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and brain-computer interfacing. With Dana Ballard, he proposed the predictive coding model of brain function in 1999.[2] He has contributed to Bayesian models of perception and decision making. In brain-computer interfacing, Prof. Rao and his collaborators were the first to demonstrate direct brain control of a humanoid robot in 2007.[3][4]

In the first demonstration of human brain-to-brain communication in August 2013, Rao wearing an electrical brain-signal reading cap triggered the movement of his colleague Andrea Stocco's hand via the Internet, allowing their brains to cooperate to solve a computer game.[5] The demonstration was subsequently replicated across other pairs of humans,[6] and extended to other tasks,[7] and to a BrainNet for more than two brains.[8]

Rao also works on the decipherment of the Indus script.[9] By comparing the entropy of the Indus script with entropies of linguistic scripts such as those for Sumerian and Old Tamil, and nonlinguistic sequences such as DNA and a programming language, his work suggested that the Indus script behaves more like a linguistic script than nonlinguistic sequences.[10][11] He has also given a TED talk on this topic where he backed the Dravidian hypothesis put forward by Iravatham Mahadevan.[12]

Rao is the author of the book Brain-Computer Interfacing (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and co-editor of two volumes, Probabilistic Models of the Brain (MIT Press, 2002) and Bayesian Brain (MIT Press, 2007). He has given a TEDx talk on "Brain co-processors: When AI meets the Brain."[13]

With Prof. Adrienne Fairhall, Rao offered the first massive open online course in computational neuroscience in 2013. The course continues to be offered on Coursera.[14]

Rao graduated summa cum laude from Angelo State University in 1992 with a B.S. degree in Computer Science/Mathematics. He then attended the University of Rochester where he earned his Master's degree (1994) and Ph.D. (1998) in Computer Science.[1] He was a Sloan Postdoctoral Fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies before joining the University of Washington faculty in 2000.

Awards

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d "Curriculum Vitae: Rajesh P.N. Rao" (PDF). Washington.edu. September 2010. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-10-29. Retrieved 2014-11-25.
  2. ^ Predictive coding in the visual cortex
  3. ^ Bell, Christian J; Shenoy, Pradeep; Chalodhorn, Rawichote; Rao, Rajesh P N (15 June 2008). "Control of a humanoid robot by a noninvasive brain–computer interface in humans". Journal of Neural Engineering. 5 (2): 214–220. Bibcode:2008JNEng...5..214B. doi:10.1088/1741-2560/5/2/012. PMID 18483450. S2CID 849280.
  4. ^ Sandhana, Lakshmi (25 October 2010). "Robot reads minds to train itself". BBC News.
  5. ^ Vergano, Dan (28 August 2013). "Researcher remotely controls colleague's body with brain". USA Today.
  6. ^ Rao, Rajesh P N; Stocco, Andrea; Bryan, Matthew; Sarma, Devapratim; Youngquist, Tiffany M; Wu, Joseph; Prat, Chantel S (5 November 2014). "A Direct Brain-to-Brain Interface in Humans". PLOS ONE. 9 (11): e111332. Bibcode:2014PLoSO...9k1332R. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0111332. PMC 4221017. PMID 25372285.
  7. ^ Stocco, Andrea; Prat, Chantel S; Losey, Darby M; Cronin, Jeneva A; Wu, Joseph; Abernethy, Justin A; Rao, Rajesh P N; Iacoboni, Marco (23 September 2015). "Playing 20 Questions with the Mind: Collaborative Problem Solving by Humans Using a Brain-to-Brain Interface". PLOS ONE. 10 (9): e0137303. Bibcode:2015PLoSO..1037303S. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0137303. PMC 4580467. PMID 26398267.
  8. ^ Jiang, Linxing; Stocco, Andrea; Losey, Darby M; Abernethy, Justin A; Prat, Chantel S; Rao, Rajesh P N (16 April 2019). "BrainNet: A Multi-Person Brain-to-Brain Interface for Direct Collaboration Between Brains". Scientific Reports. 9 (1): 6115. Bibcode:2019NatSR...9.6115J. doi:10.1038/s41598-019-41895-7. PMC 6467884. PMID 30992474.
  9. ^ Noam Hassenfeld (June 2023). "Cracking the Indus Code". Vox.com. Unexplainable. Retrieved 15 June 2023.
  10. ^ Rao, Rajesh P N; Yadav, Nisha; Vahia, Mayank N; Joglekar, Hrishikesh; Adhikari, R; Mahadevan, Iravatham (29 May 2009). "Entropic Evidence for Linguistic Structure in the Indus Script" (PDF). Science. 324 (5931): 1165. Bibcode:2009Sci...324.1165R. doi:10.1126/science.1170391. PMID 19389998. S2CID 15565405.
  11. ^ Rao, Rajesh P N; Yadav, Nisha; Vahia, Mayank N; Joglekar, Hrishikesh; Adhikari, Ronojoy; Mahadevan, Iravatham (December 2010). "Entropy, the Indus Script, and Language:A Reply to R. Sproat". Computational Linguistics. 36 (4): 795–805. doi:10.1162/coli_c_00030. S2CID 423521.
  12. ^ A Rosetta Stone for a lost language
  13. ^ Brain Co-Processors: When AI Meets the Brain
  14. ^ Computational Neuroscience
  15. ^ "Babies Learn From Robots While Robots Learn From Babies- All Images | NSF - National Science Foundation". www.nsf.gov.
  16. ^ "Business News Live, Share Market News - Read Latest Finance News, IPO, Mutual Funds News". The Economic Times.
  17. ^ "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Rajesh P.N. Rao".
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