Online Event
Growing Up in Academia with Anil Seth
Anil Seth
What is it to be a scientist? How does one become a scientist? Growing Up in Academia is a conversation series with academics at different levels of their career focusing on the sometimes short, sometimes long and winding roads behind the “official CV”.
Each event features an open conversation (interview) with a different faculty member, representing the broad spectrum of academic life. We will cover topics such as dealing with expectations (your own and others’), the role of luck/coincidence in scientific discovery, impostor syndrome, procrastination, and conflicts with advisors. Join us for a conversation about the human factors that universally inform the profession, but that too often remain unspoken. These events will be hosted and presented by Lucia Melloni (Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics).
On Monday, October 28, 6 p.m. CET, Growing Up in Academia features Anil Seth, Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex.
This Growing Up in Academia session is an online event: Please register here
Official CV
With more than two decades of research and outreach experience, Anil’s mission is to advance the science of consciousness and to use its insights for the benefit of society, technology and medicine. An internationally leading researcher, Anil is also a renowned public speaker, best-selling author, and sought-after collaborator.
Anil is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience and Director of the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex, Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Program on Brain, Mind and Consciousness, and a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Investigator. In 2014 he founded the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness (Oxford University Press) and remained Editor-in-Chief until 2024. He has published more than 200 research papers, is recognized as being in the top 0.1% of researchers worldwide (2019-2023, Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher) and was named in the Top 50 Innovators list by World Summit AI (2022). He holds degrees in Natural Sciences (MA, Cambridge), Knowledge-Based Systems (MSc, Sussex), and Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (Ph.D., Sussex). He carried out his postdoctoral work in San Diego with the Nobel laureate Gerald Edelman.
Anil’s research expertise covers the neuroscience and philosophy of consciousness; the relationship between AI and consciousness; cognitive neuroscience; neuroscience-based approaches to AI; the ethics of consciousness and AI; perceptual diversity; the nature of hallucinations; measures of complexity, causality, and emergence, and other topics.
Anil’s book - Being You: A New Science of Consciousness (Faber/Dutton, 2021) – was an instant Sunday Times Top 10 Bestseller, a 2021 Book of the Year for The Guardian, The Economist, The New Statesman, Bloomberg Business, and a 2021 Science Book of the Year for The Guardian and The Financial Times. It has been translated into 12 languages. In 2023 he won the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize, awarded annually to the scientist or engineer whose expertise in communicating scientific ideas in lay terms is exemplary. Prospect Magazine listed him as one of 25 top global thinkers for 2024. Anil’s main-stage TED talk has been viewed over fourteen million times and is one of their most popular science talks. He was the 2017 President of the British Science Association (Psychology Section) and the 2019 winner of the KidSpirit Perspectives award. He has featured in many high-profile podcasts (including Sam Harris, Rangan Chatterjee). He has appeared in several films (The Most Unknown, The Search), appears regularly on BBC Radio (Life Scientific, Inside Science, Today Programme, etc), and has written for many outlets including Aeon, The Guardian, Granta, New Scientist, and Scientific American. His other books include 30 Second Brain (Ivy Press, 2014) and EyeBenders (with Clive Gifford, winner of the 2015 Royal Society Young Person’s Book Prize), and he has collaborated on a wide range of art-science projects from drama (Elegy, Nick Payne) to rap (The Rap Guide to Consciousness, with Baba Brinkman), and is lead scientist on the groundbreaking immersive experience Dreamachine, which won several awards including the 2023 CogX Best Innovation in Creative Arts award and the 2023 Lumen Immersive Environment Award.
Unoffical CV
I was born in Oxford in 1972, and grew up in a small village in Oxfordshire. I went to the local state school where I wasn’t very good at sports (apart from badminton), but did well enough academically (only just) to get into King’s College, Cambridge, to study natural sciences. I chose King’s because they had a track record of taking students from state schools, so I thought I might fit in better there.
My original intention was to study physics. I was already fascinated by consciousness, and thought that physics would be the best way to approach it. Or to get a proper job. I found Cambridge incredibly challenging, both academically and socially, perhaps because I was still 17. I decided to leave, with the intention of returning a year later. Looking back, this was the first time I made a decision for myself, against the well-intentioned advice of others. I returned in 1991 and loved it. I graduated in 1994 having specialised in experimental psychology rather than physics. Physics had gotten too hard for me - I hit a wall somewhere around quantum mechanics - but I realised (i) I enjoyed writing, and (ii) it was possible to learn about the brain without having to learn all of physics first. My mentor at Cambridge was Nicholas Mackintosh. Perhaps ironically he was one of the leading behaviourist psychologists of the 20th Century and must have been horrified by my fascination with consciousness. But he was always very supportive. I feel very fortunate to have had this start into academia.
I then moved to Sussex for my MSc and later Ph.D. I liked the idea of living in Brighton, and I was also attracted by the interdiscplinary ethos of Sussex. I still value this. Other reasons for Sussex included Andy Clark being there - who’s book Microcognition was very influential for me. My Ph.D. - which was in computer science and AI - ended up wandering around various topics. I don’t think I could get away with such an undirected PhD these days. But it did give me useful exposure to different areas which later came in very handy: cybernetics, autopoiesis, evolutionary robotics etc. I’ll always be grateful to my supervisor, Phil Husbands, for his mentorship.
My postdoc years were spent in San Diego at the Neurosciences Institute, 2001-2007, mentored by Jeff Krichmar and Gerald Edelman. This is where I switched into consciousness science more specifically. I feel lucky to have had this opportunity. It was a time when consciousness research was still very fringe - even more so than now - so I think it was actually easier in some ways to make my way into it.
In 2007 I returned to Sussex for a faculty job and have stayed there ever since, mainly because of the brilliant colleagues, students, and researchers I’ve been fortunate enough to work with and learn from.
The event will be held on Zoom. Pleaso note the Data Protection Information Regarding Zoom Webinars.