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Konrad Paul Körding (born 1973) is a German neuroscience professor at the University of Pennsylvania and co-founder of Neuromatch and the Community for Rigor. He is known for his contributions to the fields of motor control, neural data methods, and computational neuroscience, as well as his advocacy and contribution to open science and scientific rigor.

Biography

Kording obtained both a diploma degree and a PhD in physics at ETH Zurich in 1997 and 2001, respectively. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Collegium Helveticum in Zurich and at University College London, followed by a Heisenberg Fellow position at MIT. He joined the faculty at Northwestern University and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago where he was a professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation, physiology, and applied mathematics. In 2017, he joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania with joint appointments in the Department of Neuroscience and Department of Bioengineering.

Scientific contributions

Konrad Kording's research combines experimental methods with the application of computational principles. The main principle of his work is the idea of normative models and in particular Bayesian statistics. Some of his most controversial work is work on predicting the future success of scientists, leading to a calculator predicting the h-index 10 years into the future. His experimental work addresses motor learning and motor control, relating these phenomena to Bayesian ideas. Most recently, he has focused on methods of analyzing neural data and methods for obtaining large neural datasets (see Brain Initiative). Kording is a frequent advocate of shifting research paradigms in neuroscience, publishing and co-authoring various letters, papers, and talks on the applications of deep learning in neuroscience.

In 2023, Kording was one of several prominent scientists leading calls to reverse engineer an entire nervous system.

Science Education

After the COVID-19 pandemic shut down neuroscience summer schools and workshops worldwide in 2020, Kording co-founded Neuromatch, a non-profit organization focused on promoting equity in the sciences and advancing open science policies, alongside Megan Peters, Paul Schrater, Sean Escola, Athena Akrami, Kate Bonnen, Carsen Stringer, Brad Wyble, and Gunnar Blohm. The project started with Neuromatch Conference and later expanded to Neuromatch Academy and the Neuromatch Open Publishing journal. As an organization, Neuromatch has quickly risen to the forefront of the open science and remote learning movements, enjoying extensive news coverage in the wake of both its success and its efforts to obtain special permission from the US Office of Foreign Assets Control to teach students from Iran. Since 2020, Neuromatch has hosted annual conferences and workshops.

In 2021, Neuromatch Academy added a deep learning course in addition to its original computational neuroscience course. The school has taught over 10,000 students with the help of several hundred teaching assistants across its three iterations. Neuromatch Academy has been the subject of several papers exploring the educational efficacy and accessibility of its program.

Open science

On September 27, 2022, Neuromatch posted an open letter to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy making a number of policy suggestions that it argued would promote equity and open access in scientific research. Over 1,000 academic professionals from 33 countries and 240 universities signed the letter, including Yann LeCun, Michael Eisen, Peter Murray-Rust, Peter Suber, Timothy Behrens, Daniel Wolpert, Chris Bourg, Ila Fiete, and more.

That same month, Kording was awarded a grant by the National Institutes of Health to "develop a user-friendly, open-source educational platform of modules that address biases in research, logical fallacies around causality, hypothesis development, literature search design, identifying experimental variables, and reducing confounding variables in research." Kording's initiative, called the Community for Rigor, launched their website later the same year.

Kording has also published and co-authored papers on the subject of open data.

References

1. ^ Ozio, Ron (10 May 2017). "Konrad Kording Appointed Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor". Penn News. University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved 7 June 2017.
2. "Konrad Kording - CV" (PDF). Retrieved 7 June 2017.
3. Doerig, Adrien; Sommers, Rowan P.; Seeliger, Katja; Richards, Blake; Ismael, Jenann; Lindsay, Grace W.; Kording, Konrad P.; Konkle, Talia; van Gerven, Marcel A. J.; Kriegeskorte, Nikolaus; Kietzmann, Tim C. (July 2023). "The neuroconnectionist research programme". Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 24 (7): 431–450. arXiv:2209.03718. doi:10.1038/s41583-023-00705-w. PMID 37253949.
4. Richards, Blake A.; Lillicrap, Timothy P.; Beaudoin, Philippe; Bengio, Yoshua; Bogacz, Rafal; Christensen, Amelia; Clopath, Claudia; Costa, Rui Ponte; de Berker, Archy; Ganguli, Surya; Gillon, Colleen J.; Hafner, Danijar; Kepecs, Adam; Kriegeskorte, Nikolaus; Latham, Peter; Lindsay, Grace W.; Miller, Kenneth D.; Naud, Richard; Pack, Christopher C.; Poirazi, Panayiota; Roelfsema, Pieter; Sacramento, João; Saxe, Andrew; Scellier, Benjamin; Schapiro, Anna C.; Senn, Walter; Wayne, Greg; Yamins, Daniel; Zenke, Friedemann; Zylberberg, Joel; Therien, Denis; Kording, Konrad P. (November 2019). "A deep learning framework for neuroscience". Nature Neuroscience. 22 (11): 1761–1770. doi:10.1038/s41593-019-0520-2. PMC 7115933. PMID 31659335.
5. Zador, Anthony; Escola, Sean; Richards, Blake; Ölveczky, Bence; Bengio, Yoshua; Boahen, Kwabena; Botvinick, Matthew; Chklovskii, Dmitri; Churchland, Anne; Clopath, Claudia; DiCarlo, James; Ganguli, Surya; Hawkins, Jeff; Körding, Konrad; Koulakov, Alexei; LeCun, Yann; Lillicrap, Timothy; Marblestone, Adam; Olshausen, Bruno; Pouget, Alexandre; Savin, Cristina; Sejnowski, Terrence; Simoncelli, Eero; Solla, Sara; Sussillo, David; Tolias, Andreas S.; Tsao, Doris (22 March 2023). "Catalyzing next-generation Artificial Intelligence through NeuroAI". Nature Communications. 14 (1): 1597. doi:10.1038/s41467-023-37180-x. PMC 10033876. PMID 36949048.
6. Kording, Konrad (26 February 2024). "Neural decoding for BCI: the objectives, principles and the future". 2024 12th International Winter Conference on Brain-Computer Interface (BCI). pp. 1–2. doi:10.1109/BCI60775.2024.10480472. ISBN 979-8-3503-0943-0.
7. "We're This Close To Reverse Engineering A Nervous System". Discover Magazine.
8. Blohm, Gunnar (21 June 2021). "Neuromatch Academy: The Story". Medium.
9. Ro, Christine (7 August 2020). "How researchers overturned US sanctions on a virtual summer school". Nature. doi:10.1038/d41586-020-02347-9.
10. Jackson, Christina (3 May 2021). "Neuromatch Academy". GEN - Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.
11. "How Neuroscientists Are Adapting to the Ongoing Pandemic". Simons Foundation. 29 September 2021.
12. ""디지털 시대 창업, 확실한 목표의식 있어야 기회 온다"". 한경닷컴 (in Korean). 10 October 2022.
13. Askham, Angie Voyles (8 September 2022). "Spectrum Launch: Fostering neurodiversity, promotions, grad school placements". Spectrum | Autism Research News.
14. Sela-Vasiliu, Sapir; Miehl, Christoph; Huygelier, Hanne; Oren-Suissa, Meital; Gjorgjieva, Julijana; Gillebert, Celine R. (31 August 2022). "FENS-Kavli Network of Excellence: Mentorship during the COVID-19 pandemic: Perspectives, challenges and opportunities". European Journal of Neuroscience. 58 (12): 4429–4437. doi:10.1111/ejn.15797. ISSN 0953-816X. PMC 9538951. PMID 35980818.
15. Achakulvisut, Titipat; Ruangrong, Tulakan; Mineault, Patrick; Vogels, Tim P.; Peters, Megan A. K.; Poirazi, Panayiota; Rozell, Christopher; Wyble, Brad; Goodman, Dan F. M.; Kording, Konrad Paul (1 April 2021). "Towards Democratizing and Automating Online Conferences: Lessons from the Neuromatch Conferences". Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 25 (4): 265–268. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2021.01.007. hdl:10044/1/88305. ISSN 1364-6613. PMID 33608214. S2CID 231930079.
16. van Viegen, Tara; Akrami, Athena; Bonnen, Kathryn; DeWitt, Eric; Hyafil, Alexandre; Ledmyr, Helena; Lindsay, Grace W.; Mineault, Patrick; Murray, John D.; Pitkow, Xaq; Puce, Aina; Sedigh-Sarvestani, Madineh; Stringer, Carsen; Achakulvisut, Titipat; Alikarami, Elnaz; Atay, Melvin Selim; Batty, Eleanor; Erlich, Jeffrey C.; Galbraith, Byron V.; Guo, Yueqi; Juavinett, Ashley L.; Krause, Matthew R.; Li, Songting; Pachitariu, Marius; Straley, Elizabeth; Valeriani, Davide; Vaughan, Emma; Vaziri-Pashkam, Maryam; Waskom, Michael L.; Blohm, Gunnar; Kording, Konrad; Schrater, Paul; Wyble, Brad; Escola, Sean; Peters, Megan A. K. (1 July 2021). "Neuromatch Academy: Teaching Computational Neuroscience with Global Accessibility". Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 25 (7): 535–538. arXiv:2012.08973. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2021.03.018. ISSN 1364-6613. PMID 33994097. S2CID 229188280.
17. Kording, Konrad Paul (October 2021). "For love of neuroscience: The Neuromatch movement". Neuron. 109 (19): 3034–3035. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2021.07.021. PMID 34559980.
18. "Open letter to the WHOSTP and Subcommittee on Open Science". ostp-letter.github.io.
19. Pappas, Melissa (9 September 2022). "Konrad Kording's CENTER is Part of a New NIH Education Initiative on Scientific Rigor". Penn Engineering Blog.
20. . {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
21. Johnson, Erik C; Wilt, Miller; Rodriguez, Luis M; Norman-Tenazas, Raphael; Rivera, Corban; Drenkow, Nathan; Kleissas, Dean; LaGrow, Theodore J; Cowley, Hannah P; Downs, Joseph; K. Matelsky, Jordan; J. Hughes, Marisa; P. Reilly, Elizabeth; A. Wester, Brock; L. Dyer, Eva; P. Kording, Konrad; R. Gray-Roncal, William (December 2020). "Toward a scalable framework for reproducible processing of volumetric, nanoscale neuroimaging datasets". GigaScience. 9 (12). doi:10.1093/gigascience/giaa147. PMC 7751400. PMID 33347572.

• German neuroscientists
• Northwestern University faculty
• Living people
• ETH Zurich alumni
• University of Pennsylvania faculty
• 1973 births