Machine Learning and Neural Computation Group

We pursue a broad range of topics in machine learning, from statistical theory and methodology to applications, geared toward understanding how intelligence and cognition emerge in the brain and in computational systems. We are interested in translational research where computational modeling can lead to insights about cognition, and (in the reverse direction) where principles of cognition can inform the design of better AI systems.

We organize a research and reading group on "NeuroAI" that can act as an on-ramp for research in this area; contact us if interested in participating.

John Lafferty

John C. Malone Professor of Statistics and Data Science, and Director of the Center for Neurocomputation and Machine Intelligence at the Wu Tsai Insitute at Yale University.

John Lafferty is John C. Malone Professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Science at Yale, with a secondary appointment in Computer Science. Lafferty is an Associate Director of the Wu Tsai Institute at Yale, a University-wide institute focused on the mission of understanding human cognition and exploring human potential by sparking interdisciplinary inquiry. He is Director of the Center for Neurocomputation and Machine Intelligence within the WTI. He is also a member of the Institute for the Foundations of Data Science at Yale. His recent service at Yale includes serving on the University-wide Committee on Data-Intensive Social Science, and on the executive committee for the Institution for Social and Policy Studies.

Before joining Yale, Lafferty was Louis Block Professor in the Department of Statistics and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago and also an Adjunct Professor at the Toyota Technological Institute of Chicago, and a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University. At CMU, he was a faculty member in the Computer Science Department, the Department of Statistics and the Machine Learning Department, where he played a role in founding and directing the Machine Learning PhD program.

Lafferty and his co-authors have received several best paper awards recognizing their work, and he has received a Yale teaching prize for his courses in machine learning. He received his doctoral degree in mathematics from Princeton University, where he was a member of the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics.