Inception insights

 
The research that Andreas Tolias, PhD, does in his laboratory is undeniably futuristic, even by Silicon Valley standards. That is why when he took up his post as professor of ophthalmology at the Byers Eye Institute in April 2024, the feeling across the university was one of elation.

Tolias, who also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford is navigating the intersection of neuroscience and artificial intelligence (AI), focusing on vision and cognitive behaviors. His research is a unique cross-section of disciplines, combining large-scale experiments and AI tools to decipher the neural code.

When Tolias explains what that work entails in practice, he takes his listener on what some might consider a mind-bending exploration of “inception loops” that can implant a pattern into the brain and record the natural response while a well-trained deep learning model learns and predicts how thousands of neurons will respond to that information with stunning accuracy. As that deep learning model becomes more sophisticated, it will help scientists like Tolias understand the functional organization of the brain’s connections in detailed and groundbreaking ways.

Ideally, Tolias says, this work will lead to prosthetic devices that restore sight to the blind.

“Stanford is ideally suited for this kind of work, because it has both an excellent medical school, which is strong in basic neuroscience, and it is also very strong in engineering, particularly AI,” Tolias said.

Tolias majored in natural sciences at Cambridge University, followed by doctoral studies at MIT and postdoctoral training at the Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tuebingen, Germany. In 2006, he landed an assistant professor position at Baylor College of Medicine, and rose to a tenured position in 2018.

When the time came to join the Byers Eye Institute, Tolias wasted no time fostering relationships across the university, working with AI, neuroscience, and ophthalmic experts. He’s collaborating closely with those colleagues on interdisciplinary initiatives, including building a foundation model of the brain.

“I’m very excited to use AI in large-scale experiments to really understand that code of visual intelligence,” he said. “Working with our engineering and AI colleagues, I also want to try and see if we can build more AI that is more human aligned…we think that’s going to be more robust and more intelligent at the end of the day.”

Tolias also came to Stanford with an added bonus: he brought the majority of his laboratory staff with him, underlining the team’s dedication to their mission. Ultimately, 23 of the 25 postdoctoral fellows, his lab manager, researchers, and graduate students picked up and settled themselves at Stanford so they could keep pushing forward the laboratory’s work.

Paul Fahey, the Tolias lab’s research engineer, has worked with Tolias since 2014 and was eager to learn more about invention and innovation at Stanford.

“Startup culture is very well developed in Silicon Valley, and it is pretty unique in the country, if not the world,” he said. “Moving here was a good chance to take part in that and learn more about the industry model and as well as the academic model of medicine.”

Senior Research Scientist Katrin Franke met Tolias in Germany 2019 when she was an early career research group leader at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neurosciences. A few years later, when Tolias offered her a role in his lab in Houston, she accepted, knowing a move to Stanford was imminent.

“Working with the people in the Tolias Lab, all of the science is very team-oriented,” Franke said. “This move brought us a bit closer inside and outside of the lab.”

Tolias is excited for what is to come as the team pushes forward and new opportunities emerge through unique partnerships at the Byers Eye Institute and at Stanford broadly.

“This was a big endeavor with many moving pieces, but in the end it is worth it for the incredible work we will do together at the Byers Eye Institute at Stanford,” he said.