February 13, 2026

We are pleased to report that special lecture event “KAIWA”, inviting external experts to our Wako office, was held for the purpose of acquiring diverse perspectives and knowledge on new fields.

Guest speaker:

Name：Dr. Kai Arulkumaran

Affiliation: Research Scientist at Sakana AI

WEB:　 https://scholar.google.co.jp/citations?user=QKCypSoAAAAJ&hl=ja

Title of the talk: "Artificial and Biological Neurons, General and Embodied Intelligence”

Abstract:

In this talk, I aim to cover my research journey, working at the intersection of artificial and biological intelligence. The question that has driven me from the start of my research career is, “how can we replicate biological intelligence, artificially?” From more abstract theories of artificial general intelligence, I went from deep reinforcement learning to more neuroscientically-inspired methods, and eventually transitioned into the science of consciousness. But this was also driven by a desire to apply technology in the real world, and for the last few years I have been working on embodied intelligence, in the form of brain-robot interfaces and assistive robotics. Finally, I want to revisit principles from computational neuroscience and cognitive science to try and address the shortcomings of current systems.

Profile:

Dr. Kai Arulkumaran is a Research Scientist at Sakana AI, working on biologically-inspired intelligence, and a Visiting Researcher at Araya, working on brain-controlled robots as a PI on the JST Moonshot R&D program. Previously, he completed his BA in Computer Science at the University of Cambridge, his PhD in Bioengineering at Imperial College London, and had work experience at DeepMind, FAIR, Microsoft Research, Twitter Cortex, and NNAISENSE. His research areas are deep learning, reinforcement learning, evolutionary computation, and computational neuroscience.