Event
ECE Colloquium Series - Behtash Babadi, UMD
Friday, September 19, 2025
3:30 p.m.-4:30 p.m.
Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building, Room 1110
Darcy Long
301 405 3114
dlong123@umd.edu
Speaker: Behtash Babadi, Associate Professor, University of Maryland
Title: "Do Androids Hear Electric Sheep Baa?" - Lessons from and for the Auditory Brain
Abstract: Auditory processing is a hallmark of sophisticated brain function, shaped by rapid task-dependent dynamics and multi-scale organization. In this talk, I will present several case studies showing how insights from the auditory brain can inspire new approaches in machine learning and signal processing, and how these algorithms, in turn, uncover the mechanisms underlying auditory function. These case studies include theoretical advances in signal processing, novel algorithm designs, and applications to data from human, ferret, and mouse brains.
Bio: Behtash Babadi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and the Institute for Systems Research at the University of Maryland, College Park. He received the Ph.D. and M.Sc. degrees in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University in 2011 and 2008, respectively, and a B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 2006. From 2011 to 2014, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as at the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital. He received an NSF CAREER Award and the UMD ECE George Corcoran Award for Faculty in 2016, and the UMD E. Robert Kent Outstanding Teaching Award for Junior Faculty in 2019. His research interests include statistical and adaptive signal processing, neural signal processing, and systems neuroscience.
