Dr. Eero Simoncelli is a distinguished leader in computational neuroscience and vision science. He currently holds the position of Silver Professor at New York University with appointments spanning Neural Science, Mathematics, Data Science and Psychology. Additionally he serves as the Scientific Director of the Center for Computational Neuroscience at the Flatiron Institute part of the Simons Foundation. Dr. Simoncelli received his Bachelor of Science in Physics summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1984 followed by advanced mathematical studies at Cambridge University. He completed his doctoral work at MIT earning his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1993.
Dr. Simoncelli's pioneering research has fundamentally shaped our understanding of visual perception through computational theory and neuroscience. He is renowned for developing the Structural Similarity SSIM index a groundbreaking method for measuring perceptual image quality that earned him an Engineering Emmy Award in 2015. His theoretical contributions include the steerable pyramid representation Bayesian models of perception and innovative approaches to texture modeling that have profoundly influenced both computer vision and neuroscience. These frameworks have provided critical insights into biological visual processing and enabled significant advances in machine vision technologies.
As a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator from 2000 to 2020 and the inaugural director of the Center for Computational Neuroscience Dr. Simoncelli has shaped the trajectory of computational neuroscience. His leadership extends to mentoring numerous graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who have established successful careers in academia and industry. Dr. Simoncelli has been recognized with prestigious honors including IEEE Fellowship and an NSF CAREER Award. His current research continues to explore how statistical properties of natural scenes shape perceptual processing maintaining his position at the forefront of computational neuroscience.
