Joe Paton

Joe Paton is the Director of Neuroscience and Senior Principal Investigator at the Champalimaud Foundation in Lisbon, Portugal. Focusing on the neurobiology of time, learning, and decision-making, his work bridges the gap between circuits, systems, computation and behavior. He earned his PhD from Columbia University and held research positions at Harvard and Stanford before moving to Portugal. He currently leads the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme, where he has been instrumental in establishing the Centre for Restorative Neurotechnology - a hub dedicated to merging neuroscience with robotics and digital therapeutics to treat chronic diseases. His "Learning Lab" utilizes a multidisciplinary approach, combining electrophysiology, modern techniques for circuit neuroscience and computational modeling to uncover how the constellation of modular brain systems that comprise the mammalian nervous system gives rise to intelligent behavior. He is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) International Research Scholar, a recipient of a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant, and a member of the Centre for Responsible AI. His current research focuses on "Synthetic Neuroscience" - applying biological insights to construct integrative models for the neural control of behavior and using such models in concert with experiments to ratchet forward our understanding of whole brain mechanisms of behavior.