BLISS AI Speaker Series #37: Virtual Neuroscience with Neural Digital Twins - Sophia Sanborn

Join us for an exciting session featuring Sophia Sanborn, Assistant Professor at Stanford University, as she delves into the topic of "Virtual Neuroscience with Neural Digital Twins" for approximately 45 minutes.

After the insightful discussion, you'll have the chance to network with fellow AI enthusiasts while enjoying free drinks and pizza! 🍕🥤

Please arrive early, as doors close by 7:15 PM. To ensure your spot, it's necessary to RSVP on Luma — don't miss out!

Who Should Attend?

This event welcomes anyone fascinated by state-of-the-art AI research, particularly designed for:

• Students
• PhD candidates
• Academic researchers
• Industry professionals focused on machine learning

Abstract

The main goal of systems neuroscience is to unravel how populations of neurons represent and transform the world around us. As neural datasets expand in size and complexity, traditional methods of hypothesis generation and neuron characterization have become limiting. Enter neural digital twins — deep learning models that predict the responses of biological neurons, presenting an innovative approach to condense large-scale recordings into manageable experimental models. This enables us to extract, perturb, and analyze data efficiently in silico.

Using this promising framework, we examine neurons in both macaque and mouse visual cortex, uncovering interpretable feature selectivity and revealing hidden attributes of the neural code. Moreover, these models pave the way for a new era of virtual neuroscience, enabling automated scientific discovery through extensive experimental simulations that would be challenging or impossible to conduct in vivo.

About the Speaker

Sophia Sanborn serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at Stanford University, coupled with a courtesy appointment in Neurology. She is also the Co-Director of the Enigma Project, a vast initiative aimed at decoding neural mechanisms, and the Co-Founder of Metamorphic, an AI firm that constructs neural digital twins and brain-aligned models. Her research intersects neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and mathematics, utilizing extensive neural data and computational frameworks to elucidate the principles of neural coding in both biological and artificial contexts.

We are BLISS e.V., based in Berlin, dedicated to connecting enthusiasts passionate about machine learning. This summer in 2026, we plan to host another thrilling speaker series in Berlin, featuring distinguished researchers from Cohere, ETH Zürich, University of Oxford, Hugging Face, and Stanford University!

For more information, visit our website: BLISS Website and check out our YouTube channel: BLISS YouTube 📺

Disclaimer: By attending this event, you consent to being photographed.