Peter Dayan | |
---|---|
Alma mater | University of Cambridge (BA) University of Edinburgh (PhD) |
Known for | Q-learning |
Spouse | Li Zhaoping |
Awards | Rumelhart Prize (2012) The Brain Prize (2017) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Computational neuroscience Reinforcement learning |
Institutions | Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics University College London Massachusetts Institute of Technology Uber[1] University of Toronto Salk Institute |
Thesis | Reinforcing connectionism : learning the statistical way (1991) |
Doctoral advisor | David Willshaw |
Website | www |
Peter Dayan FRS is a British neuroscientist and computer scientist who is director at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, along with Ivan De Araujo. He is co-author of Theoretical Neuroscience,[2] an influential textbook on computational neuroscience. He is known for applying Bayesian methods from machine learning and artificial intelligence to understand neural function and is particularly recognized for relating neurotransmitter levels to prediction errors and Bayesian uncertainties.[3] He has pioneered the field of reinforcement learning (RL) where he helped develop the Q-learning algorithm, and made contributions to unsupervised learning, including the wake-sleep algorithm for neural networks and the Helmholtz machine.[4][5][6]