Talmo Pereira is assistant professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where he directs the Center for AI and Research Computing and leads a lab working at the intersection of computer vision, machine learning and neuroscience. He is a pioneer of computational ethology—the use of deep learning and computer vision to quantify complex animal behavior—and the creator of SLEAP, a widely used open-source tool for multi-animal pose tracking. SLEAP and its predecessor LEAP have together amassed more than 1,900 citations and 150,000 downloads, with some 45,000 users across 90 countries.
Pereira’s lab develops computational methods for measuring and modeling behavior from movement, with applications spanning motor control, neuromechanical simulation, neurodegenerative disease, cancer biology, plant biology and the humanities. He started his lab as a Salk Fellow in 2021 after earning a Ph.D. in neuroscience at Princeton University, where he held the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the Porter Ogden Jacobus Fellowship, Princeton’s highest graduate honor. His work, recognized with the Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award, has appeared in journals including Nature Methods and Nature Neuroscience and is supported by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, NASA and private funders.
