Brain-inspired Neural Networks (BNN) Group

The Brain-inspired Neural Networks (BNN) Group @ BITS Pilani Goa campus falls under the purview of the Data Science Research Group of the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems (CSIS). The lab comprise a small team of undergraduate students and Research scholars, led by Basabdatta Sen Bhattacharya (BSB), who are fascinated with the areas of Neuromorphic computing in general, and brain-inspired neural networks and neural mechanisms in particular. The applications of such technology are, broadly speaking, two-fold:

1. Computational Neuroscience: Design and develop brain-inspired/informed neural circuits/models that can advance the understanding of brain disease and mental health. Towards this, we use lumped parameter neural networks that are known to emulate high level brain data such as electroencephalogram. 

2. Machine Intelligence: Design and develop brain-inspired/informed neural networks that can be trained for visual cognition and decision making. Thus far, we have been using the SpiNNaker neuromorphic computer primarily, and to some extent on GPU. 

BSB acknowledges the funding support by the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) Core Research Grant (CRG/2019/003534), 2020-2023, and the Research Initiation Grants by the host Institute (BITS Pilani), 2018 - 2020, that allowed for initiating lab research activities. BSB is a visiting researcher at the University of Manchester and acknowledges support from the Neuromorphic computing team (starting 2024) and the SpiNNaker team by hosting her during the summer months, as well as continuing collaboration on research projects. Currently, she has part support (human resource, equipment) from the DBT Builder project No. BT/INF/22/SP42543/2021 awarded to BITS Pilani K K Birla Goa Campus (2022 - 2027).

We take pride in all our Undergraduate and Masters students who have worked enthusiastically on their Projects, Theses, and Research practice; we are also proud of all the External Undergraduate students who have worked, and continue to work on their internships and theses at our lab. Some of these student project report/theses are highlighted on this site (see here); several others were in fact published successfully at international conferences (see here).

Along with BNN, we are also interested in Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques that are destined to define the future of humanity, indirectly or otherwise. For example see our short review paper on AI for assistive healthcare on Arxiv [link], supported by the Scientific Social Responsibility funds by SERB. With our Doctoral students and undergraduate projects, we are looking into areas such as trust worthiness of AI, predictive analytics for water pollution control, and causal inference.

We are always looking for bright minds to join the team. Expression of interest to join us or associated labs are always welcome from potential PhD scholars, in India or abroad, and at any stage of their career or life.