Terrence Sejnowski.

Terrence Sejnowski

Francis Crick Chair
Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Terrence Sejnowski holds the Francis Crick Chair at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. He is also professor of biology at the University of California, San Diego, where he co-directs the Institute for Neural Computation and the NSF Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center. He is president of the Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation, which organizes an annual conference attended by more than 1,000 researchers in machine learning and neural computation and is founding editor-in-chief of Neural Computation, published by the MIT Press.

As a pioneer in computational neuroscience, Sejnowski’s goal is to understand the principles that link brain to behavior. His laboratory uses both experimental and modeling techniques to study the biophysical properties of synapses and neurons and the population dynamics of large networks of neurons.

He received his Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University and was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School. He was on the faculty at the Johns Hopkins University before joining the faculty at the University of California, San Diego. He has published more than 300 scientific papers and 12 books, including “The Computational Brain,” with Patricia Churchland.

Explore more from The Transmitter

Photo collage featuring a portrait of Tempest McDonald.

When autistic kids grow up, Chapter 4: How did things unfold?

Tempest McDonald sues Vanderbilt University Medical Center through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Her published NIH paper finds allies.

By Brady Huggett
25 June 2026 | 27 min listen
Researchers looking at KEMRI biobank vials.

NeuroDev study maps previously unseen genetic variation in Africa

The project is helping to fill critical gaps in the genetic underpinnings of autism and other neurodevelopmental conditions.

By Brianna Abbott
25 June 2026 | 5 min read

Cooperating marmosets extend decision-making model of the brain

When a pair of marmosets works together to earn some marshmallow fluff, one of them decides to act only after its brain accumulates enough evidence about what the other is doing, new work shows.

By Calli McMurray
24 June 2026 | 1 min watch