Who is Akshay Jagadeesh, joins OpenAI after a decade of brain research at Stanford and Harvard

Indian-origin neuroscientist Akshay Jagadeesh has joined Sam Altman’s OpenAI as a research resident. His appointment was publicly announced on social media, where he stated that his work at OpenAI would focus on AI safety and accelerating progress in health and medicine.In a post shared on X (formerly Twitter) on September 7, Jagadeesh wrote, "I’m thrilled to share that I’ve joined @OpenAI as a research resident, focusing on safety research and AI for health. After nearly 10 years studying the brain, I’m excited for this next chapter building AGI to accelerate medical progress and scientific research!"

A decade in brain research at top US institutionsPrior to joining OpenAI, Akshay Jagadeesh spent nearly ten years researching the human brain at top academic institutions in the US.

He recently worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in the lab of Dr. Margaret Livingstone at Harvard Medical School, where his research focused on understanding human visual perception and the brain’s transformation of sensory inputs into perceptual experience.Jagadeesh has stated that one of his main research goals was "to characterise the geometry of sensory representations in human visual cortex and to model the cortical computations involved in using these representations for goal-driven behaviour."

Academic qualifications from Stanford and UC BerkeleyAkshay Jagadeesh holds a PhD in Psychology and Computational Cognitive Neuroscience from Stanford University. He completed his doctoral research under the guidance of Dr. Justin Gardner. His PhD work examined neural representations underlying the visual perception and recognition of objects and textures, using deep convolutional neural networks as part of the study.He completed his undergraduate education at the University of California, Berkeley, earning dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Computer Science and Cognitive Science in 2016. During his time at UC Berkeley, he worked in the lab of Professor Mark D’Esposito.Jagadeesh also conducted research as a visiting scholar from 2015 to 2016 in the lab of Dr. Martin Rolfs at Humboldt Universität / BCCN Berlin.Transition to OpenAI and focus areasAkshay Jagadeesh is currently working as a research resident at OpenAI.

According to his LinkedIn profile, his role involves two primary focus areas: advancing AI safety research to ensure systems are reliable and aligned, and exploring how AI can accelerate scientific and medical progress.He wrote, "I am especially motivated by the opportunity to translate my background in neuroscience and modelling into building AI tools that both deepen scientific discovery and contribute to human well-being."On his official website, Jagadeesh described himself as a scientist "working at the intersection of artificial intelligence and neuroscience," with an interest in both biological and artificial intelligent systems.Publications and teaching experienceJagadeesh has co-authored several peer-reviewed papers, including:• Texture bias in primate ventral visual cortex and deep neural network models of vision (ICLR ReAlign, 2024)• Texture-like representation of objects in human visual cortex (PNAS, 2022)• V1 and IT representations are directly accessible to human visual perception (NeurIPS SVRHM, 2021)He has also served as a graduate teaching assistant and instructor at Stanford University, contributing to both undergraduate and graduate-level courses such as "Intro to Cognitive Neuroscience," "Perception," and "Foundations of Cognition." Additionally, he teaches AI to high school students through the Inspirit AI institute.