Three Days of Powerful Talks

The goal of this workshop is to bring together top worldwide experts with various backgrounds in statistical physics, machine learning, computational/theoretical neuroscience for discussion, collaboration on the frontiers of these interdisciplinary fields. This workshop will be hosted by School of Physics, Sun Yat-sen University, one of the most beautiful campuses in China.

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There are active research interests in the interdisciplinary boundaries across physics, mathematics, machine learning and neural computation, which is mostly stimulated by the success of deep learning techniques in various academic and industrial applications, and also by the inquiry of how the brain works during worldwide brain projects. However, the core topic—-neural networks, still being a black box with key mechanisms unclear in applications, drives the recent efforts of the physics community towards understanding the inner workings of these artificial and biological neural networks. Progress along this line should  provide keys to open new door towards new applications, predictions and even new paradigms. Here, we gather top experts in this field to discuss recent progress, and inspire collaborations among the following topics:

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1. Analytic and numerical techniques to analyze neural networks;

2. Theory of deep learning from different perspectives;

3. Dynamical models of neural computation;

4. Data analysis and mechanisms of biological neural networks;

5. Other theoretical topics of neural computation.