AI and the Brain

Matthew Brown

Research-strategy leader, Wellcome

Dr Matthew Brown is a research-strategy leader working at the intersection of digital technology and global mental health. He is currently Head of Digital Technology, Mental Health & Life Sciences at Wellcome, where he leads strategic portfolios that accelerate the development, evaluation and responsible adoption of data-driven tools for mental health and the broader life sciences

Trained as a neuroscientist, Matthew holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford and has conducted research across cellular, circuit and cognitive neuroscience, with previous academic posts at Imperial College London and the University of Geneva. He brings this deep scientific grounding to his current work shaping large-scale research investments and collaborative programmes.

At Wellcome, Matthew manages portfolios spanning digital mental-health technologies, foundational neuroscience infrastructure, data access, software, and skills development. His work includes co-designing new models for international neuroscientific collaboration, supporting regulatory guidance for digital mental-health tools, and establishing capacity-building initiatives such as the first African Bioinformatics Institute.

Matthew has extensive experience working across academia, philanthropy, industry and regulation, and currently serves on several advisory and steering boards, including for the Alzheimer’s Disease Data Initiative and the MHRA. He is passionate about strengthening the neuroscience ecosystem through collaboration, open science and inclusive research cultures.

Mark Elliott:

Director, Professor of Data Science , SPRITE+

Mark Elliot has worked at the University of Manchester since 1996, mainly in the field of statistical confidentiality, founding the international renowned Confidentiality and Privacy Research Group (CAPRI) in 2002, and has managed numerous research projects within CAPRI remit.

​He is one of the key international researchers in the field of Statistical Disclosure and collaborates widely with non-academic partners, particularly with national statistical agencies where he has been a key influence on disclosure control methodology used in censuses and surveys and where the SUDA software that he developed in collaboration with colleagues in Computer Science at Manchester is used. 

Since 2012, he has led the UK Anonymisation Network, which has 600 members and provides advice, consultancy and training on anonymisation. 

Aside from Confidentiality, Privacy and Disclosure, his research interests include Data Science Methodology and its application to social science. He is director of the University’s new interdisciplinary MSc in Data Science and the doctoral programme in Data analytics and society.

Valentina Escott-Price

Group Leader, Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI) at Cardiff University

Prof. Valentina Escott-Price is a leading big-data researcher who applies advanced ML and AI to large genomic, clinical, and multimodal datasets to identify risk genes and biological pathways involved in disease. After studying mathematics at St. Petersburg University, she earned her PhD in Statistics from Cardiff University in 2001. She has worked in Cardiff’s Department of Psychological Medicine since 2002 and joined the UK Dementia Research Institute in 2017, where she leads the Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics programme. Combining strengths in mathematics, programming, biostatistics and genetics, she develops innovative computational approaches to illuminate mechanisms of complex disorders.

Karl Friston

Professor of Imaging Neuroscience/Wellcome Principal Research Fellow, University College London

Professor Karl Friston is a theoretical neuroscientist and an authority on brain imaging at University College London (UCL). Widely recognised as one of the most highly cited neuroscientists in the world, he invented Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM), the international standard for analysing fMRI and PET imaging data. Professor Friston is well known for his groundbreaking formulation of the Free Energy Principle and Active Inference. This unifying theory of brain function proposes that all biological systems are driven by a single imperative - to minimise "surprise" and maintain homeostasis by generating top-down predictions about the world. He proposes that this provides a mathematical framework for understanding sentience, learning, and biological self-organisation. In the context of artificial intelligence, his theoretical position offer a biologically plausible alternative to standard machine learning, advocating for "embodied" systems driven by survival and uncertainty-resolution rather than arbitrary reward functions.

Heidi Johansen-Berg

Pro-Vice Chancellor (Strategic Initiatives) and Associate Head (Research and Innovation) , University of Oxford

Professor Heidi Johansen-Berg is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives at the University of Oxford. She is also a Fellow of the Royal Society and Chair of the REF2029 Unit of Assessment 4 (Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience). Her pioneering research explores how the human brain changes its structure and function in response to learning, experience, and injury. Using advanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), her work sheds light on plasticity processes in the adult brain, demonstrating how acquiring new skills rewires biological networks. Her team translates these fundamental discoveries into clinical practice, exploring how targeted interventions like non-invasive brain stimulation can enhance motor recovery after a stroke. Furthermore, her broader research investigates how lifestyle factors, such as exercise, influence brain health and resilience across the lifespan

Sieun Lee

Research Fellow, Neurotechnology and TIPSS, SPRITE+

Sieun Lee is a Research Fellow with SPRITE+, exploring the future evolution of neurotechnology and its implications for trust, identity, privacy, safety, and security. She brings an interdisciplinary background in biomedical engineering and data-driven health research, developing computational methods for large-scale neuroimaging and health data to translate complex evidence into insights on neurodegeneration and mental health. Previously, she was a Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham supported by the MRC Digital Youth programme and NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre (2022-2025), and a University of Nottingham Precision Imaging Beacon Fellow (2021-2022).

Srikanth Ramaswamy

Newcastle University

Dr Srikanth Ramaswamy, is an associate professor in computational neuroscience and AI at Newcastle University, where he directs the Neural Circuits Laboratory. Previously a founding scientist of the Blue Brain Project at EPFL and a Marie Curie Fellow, he is a Fulbright Scholar at MIT and a Theoretical Sciences Visiting Scholar at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology. His research focuses on neuromodulation in biological and artificial neural networks. He is a founding member of the ALBA network, which advances diversity, equity, and inclusion in neuroscience globally and leads the global diversity task force.

Narender Ramnani

BNA President/ Professor of Neuroscience, Royal Holloway, University of London

Professor Ramnani is a distinguished Professor of Neuroscience at Royal Holloway, University of London, where his research group uses functional neuroimaging to understand brain organisation, and brain mechanisms that govern higher cognitive function, learning processes, and the control of action.

He is also Vice Dean for EDI at Royal Holloway’s School of Life Sciences and the Environment. Beyond his university roles, he is a member of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee APPG Advisory Group. He also makes contributions to equity, diversity, and inclusion through his contributions to the BNA Scholars programme, his role on the BBSRC's Expert EDI Advisory Group and his governance role as a member of the Governance Committee of Advance HE's Race Equality Charter. A commitment to fostering a strong, collaborative, and inclusive research community underscores the priorities he brings to the Presidency.

Maneesh Sahani

Director, Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit

Professor Maneesh Sahani is a British-based computational neuroscientist and machine-learning researcher known for his work on how the brain performs complex computations such as perception, learning, and decision-making. He is a Professor of Theoretical Neuroscience and Machine Learning at University College London (UCL) and serves as Director of the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, one of the world’s leading research centres linking neuroscience and artificial intelligence.

Christopher Summerfield

Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Oxford / UK AI Safety Institute

Professor Christopher Summerfield is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Oxford and Research Director at the UK AI Safety Institute (AISI). Bridging academia and industry, including his work with Google DeepMind, his research sits at the interface of neuroscience and AI. He explores how the learning rules of modern artificial intelligence offer quantitative models for human cognition. This is the central theme of his recent book, Natural General Intelligence: How understanding the brain can help us build AI (Oxford University Press, 2023). In it, he argues that human intelligence relies on a "scruffy" but highly effective toolbox of different learning mechanisms—such as generative modelling, reward learning, and social feedback. At the AISI, he applies these insights to biological and machine information processing to tackle the challenges of AI safety, algorithmic alignment, and the societal integration of frontier models.