Reinforcement Learning for Animal Behavior
25 Oct 2021, 15:00 — Remote, @UniGE
Speaker:
Massimo Vergassola — CNRS
Massimo Vergassola — CNRS
Abstract:
Bio:
Massimo Vergassola is a theoretical physicist working at the interface of statistical mechanics and biology. After his studies in Rome and Nice, he was a postdoc at Princeton University and a chargé de recherche at CNRS in Nice. He worked on fundamental and computational aspects of turbulence and turbulent transport. He then started his venture in biological physics, by forming and directing the unit of biological physics at Institut Pasteur from 2004 to 2013. From 2013 to 2019 he was a professor at UCSD, and contributed seminal work on the use of reinforcement learning for physical systems. He is now Directeur de Recherche at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Paris and works on a broad array of topics, from turbulent navigation to the fundamental limits of sensing in biological systems, chemotaxis, synchronisation in the early stages of embryonic development and the physical and computational principles for olfactory sensing. He is the recipient of a CNRS Bronze Medal ; the Biomedical prize thérèse Lebrasseur from the Fondation de France ; the grand prix EADS from Académie des Sciences ; a targeted grant from the Simons Foundation ; he is a fellow of the APS and was elected to the Chair Line of the division of biological physics of the APS. He is the director of the ENS-PSL Initiative on Quantitative Biology.
Massimo Vergassola is a theoretical physicist working at the interface of statistical mechanics and biology. After his studies in Rome and Nice, he was a postdoc at Princeton University and a chargé de recherche at CNRS in Nice. He worked on fundamental and computational aspects of turbulence and turbulent transport. He then started his venture in biological physics, by forming and directing the unit of biological physics at Institut Pasteur from 2004 to 2013. From 2013 to 2019 he was a professor at UCSD, and contributed seminal work on the use of reinforcement learning for physical systems. He is now Directeur de Recherche at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Paris and works on a broad array of topics, from turbulent navigation to the fundamental limits of sensing in biological systems, chemotaxis, synchronisation in the early stages of embryonic development and the physical and computational principles for olfactory sensing. He is the recipient of a CNRS Bronze Medal ; the Biomedical prize thérèse Lebrasseur from the Fondation de France ; the grand prix EADS from Académie des Sciences ; a targeted grant from the Simons Foundation ; he is a fellow of the APS and was elected to the Chair Line of the division of biological physics of the APS. He is the director of the ENS-PSL Initiative on Quantitative Biology.