Alireza Modirshanechi

Principal Investigator, LNAI

Incoming Tenure-Track Professor (W1) for Artificial Intelligence

Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science

University of Göttingen

I am an incoming tenure-track professor (W1) and a DFG Emmy Noether awardee in the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Göttingen, starting this fall, where I will run the Laboratory of Natural and Artificial Intelligence.

My research seeks to uncover computational principles of intelligent decision-making. I use tools from a wide range of domains, form cognitive science and neuroscience to machine learning and information theory, to formalize and study curiosity, agency, and similar psychological concepts and constructs. I am interested in how these constructs shape natural intelligence, how they help us understand the emergent behavior of modern AI systems, and how the enable us design more adaptive and interpretable machine learning algorithms.

Before moving to Göttingen, I was a postdoctoral researcher at Helmholtz Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, where I worked with Eric Schulz and Peter Dayan. Prior to that, I completed my Ph.D. in Computer and Communication Sciences at EPFL in 2024, under the supervision of Wulfram Gerstner, and received my B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 2018.

I have received the DFG Emmy Noether Award, the Dimitris N. Chorafas Foundation Award, and the EPFL EDIC Thesis Distinction Award, among others. You can find my CV here.

Links

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