Speaker: Professor Pawan Sinha

Title: Learning to See Late in Childhood

Abstract: The hope inherent in pursuing basic research is that sometime in the future the work will prove beneficial to society. This fruition can often take many years. However, in some instances, even the conduct of basic research can yield tangible societal benefits. I shall describe an effort that perhaps fits in this category. Named 'Project Prakash', this MIT-based initiative provides sight to blind children on the one hand and helps address questions regarding brain plasticity and learning on the other. Through a combination of behavioral and brain-imaging studies, the effort has enabled studies of visual learning late in childhood and has illuminated some of the processes that might underlie such learning. The results and their implications straddle the domains of normal development, developmental disorders and AI.

Short-Bio: Pawan Sinha is a distinguished Professor of Vision and Computational Neuroscience at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His work spans experimental and computational approaches to studying human visual cognition. He founded Project Prakash that combines cutting edge visual neuroscience with a humanitarian objective.Project Prakash sets up eye-care camps in some of the most habitually underserved regions of India, and since 2003 gives free eye-health screenings to more than 700 functionally blind children. The children are treated without charge, even those unsuitable for Sinha's research. His work has been featured in leading media, most notably for answering Molyneux's problem. He is one of the few scientists interviewed on Charlie Rose

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