Invited by the Teachers' Assembly, at the suggestion of Professor Stanislas Dehaene.
Xiao-Jing Wang is Distinguished Global Professor of Neural Science, director of the Swartz Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, adjunct professor of Physics and Mathematics at New York University. In 2012-2017, he served as the founding Provost and Vice President for Research at NYU's Shanghai internatioanl campus. Prior to joining NYU in the fall of 2012, Wang was Professor of Neurobiology and Director of the Swartz Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at Yale University. He obtained his PhD in Theoretical Physics from the Free University of Brussels in 1987 when he switched to Computational Neuroscience.
Dr. Wang's research is in theory and mathematical modeling of neural circuits dedicated to cognitive functions such as working memory and decision-making. His group has pioneered neural circuit theory of the prefrontal cortex, which is often called the "CEO of the brain". More recently, Dr. Wang's group pioneered biologically-realistic large-scale circuit models of the primate cortex, which can be used as a computational platform to elucidate the complex global brain mechanisms of cognitive functions, flexible behavior as well as applications to artificial intelligence and Psychiatry.
Dr. Wang has received numerous prizes, including Swartz Prize for Theoretical and Computational Neurosciencefromthe Society for Neuroscience, and Goldman-Rakic Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Cognitive Neuroscience jointly with Jean-Pierre Changeux.