Founding Team
Arturo completed his Bachelors in Science in Mechatronics Engineering (Summa Cum Laude) in 2012 at Universidad Nacional de Ingenieria, and later received his PhD from University of California, Santa Barbara in Dynamical Neuroscience in 2018 working under Miguel Eckstein. During his PhD, his work encompassed themes such as visual metamerism, peripheral processing, visual search and human-machine interaction. He then moved to Harvard University's Department of Psychology to work with Talia Konkle to explore the role of foveation in humans and machines. He is currently a postdoctoral research associate at MIT's Center for Brains, Minds and Machines working with Tomaso Poggio on theories of visual representational learning in humans and machines and biologically-plausible solutions to adversarial robustness. He has published works in ICLR, NeurIPS and CVPR, and is one of the co-founders of SVRHM.
Arturo is also an Artist, and currently the CEO of Artificio.
You can find his CV here.
In early 2022, (and in a spurt of 2 months) William wrote a paper that broke the world record in explainable variance for Area V4 in the BrainScore competition with an "outsider" flavor of computational models called "Vision Transformers" that have been suggested to be non-biologically plausible (Read his paper). William is currently following-up on this results at Artificio and at MIT's Center for Brains, Minds and Machines, as he prepares to apply for graduate school. William holds a Bachelors in Science in Mechatronics Engineering from Universidad Nacional de Ingenieria in Lima, Peru;
William is also All-Star in Latin American Kaggle competitions, and is currently the CTO of Artificio.
You can find his CV here.
Colin recently finished his PhD at Harvard University's Department of Psychology where he's worked at the Vision Sciences Lab advised by George Alvarez. Colin's graduate work has been at the heart of unifying human, machine (and sometimes mouse) visual computation which have earned him an affiliation at MIT's Center for Brains, Minds and Machines. An outsider from the beginning, Colin earned his B.Sc. in International Business and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California; graduating Summa Cum Laude. Colin has published his works at NeurIPS, SVRHM (winning an award for the author with most accepted papers in 2021), VSS and CCN.
Colin is also a pioneer in the field of Computational Aesthetics.
You can find his CV here.
Binxu is currently a Neuroscience PhD student at Harvard Medical School where he is advised by Carlos Ponce. Binxu's original approach to research stems from his background in Physics where he obtained his bachelors from Peking University. Given his highly computational and mathematical training, some of Binxu's work lie at the edge of our understanding of visual computation in humans where he uses tools ranging from primate neurophysiology to purely computational approaches. Binxu recently won the Fujitsu Laboratories Fellowship for Brains, Minds and Machines Summer Course in the Summer of 2021, and recently published a paper on perceptual image optimization for Neural Control.
Binxu is a pioneer of Visual Art generated from neurophysiological data and mathematical models of perception.
You can find his CV here.
Director of Software Engineering
Oscar is a Python backend engineer with more than 8 years of experience developing and leading IT teams. Experience designing and building RESTful and GraphQL APIs, implementing BDD, TDD, CI/CD and working with SCRUM, KANBAN and KATA LEAN in diverse projects. He holds a Bachelors in Science in Mechatronics Engineering (Robotics) from Universidad Nacional de Ingenieria in Lima, Peru from the Class of 2013. He has held multiple leadership positions in Peru's leading start-ups such as CTO from Crehana, Back-end engineer in SpaceAG, and Co-Founder & CEO of Chaty.
You can find his LinkedIn here.
Junior Research Scientists
Raphi Kang is a Junior Research Scientist at Artificio who is jointly finishing her Bachelors in Science at MIT's new Computation and Cognition undergraduate course at the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. She is currently doing an exchange semester abroad in Switzerland's ETH Zurich where she is learning about the mathematical foundations of computer graphics & vision, neural control of movement and motor learning. At Artificio, Raphi is working on a project that is driving our understanding around visual metamerism and adversarial robustness between humans and machines -- a project that she started at MIT's new 9.58 class; "Projects in the Science of Intelligence" in Fall 2021. Raphi's previous research experience spans work in Optical Flow in Machines to studying Cortical Dynamics in Mice, Macaques and Humans.
Raphi is also an Artist.
You can find her CV here.
John Chin 🇺🇸
John is currently a senior in high school (homeschooled) and an avid pursuer of all things computer vision related. In his junior and senior year, he interned at MIT’s Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, working at Professor Tomaso Poggio’s lab under adviser Arturo Deza to investigate the adversarial robustness for non object recognition tasks.
Most recently, he submitted a paper to SVRHM on adversarial color perception, and he plans to research biologically plausible mechanisms for adversarial robustness throughout college. Outside of the lab, John is also a passionate cello and soccer player.
Dunant Cusipuma 🇵🇪
Dunant Cusipuma is a Junior Big Data Architect at Artificio. He is currently doing his last semester of Mechatronics Engineering at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, in which he carried out a research project titled “Difference between autonomous vehicles detection in LATAM and USA” with his team-mate David Ortega. Furthermore, in the "mechatronic design project" course, he and his team successfully created an autonomous maritime vehicle in two months. He developed the training of the vehicle to detect three animals: turtles, crocodiles and platypuses and, depending on the animal detected, the vehicle would perform different maneuvers. At Artificio, based on his work, he is working on the "Brain-Score for autonomous vehicle for LATAM" project.
Outside of the lab, Dunant is also passionate about ukulele, surfing and boxing.
David Ortega 🇵🇪
David Ortega is a junior big data architect at Artificio who is finishing his bachelor's in mechatronics engineering at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. During his bachelor's, he developed, as part of a mechatronic design course, an autonomous robotic system operating in the maritime domain oriented to accomplish some requirements of the robotx challenge competition and a paper, together with Dunant Cusipuma, about the difference between autonomous vehicles detection in LATAM and USA . Another of his interests is biomedical engineering which was the topic selected for his undergraduate thesis titled myoelectric elbow orthosis for assistance. At Artificio he is working on the brain-score for autonomous vehicles for LATAM.
David also enjoys playing soccer and videogames.
Jason Li 🇺🇸
Jason recently completed his Bachelors in Computer Science with a minor in Biology at Boston University in December 2021. After graduating, he spent 10 months interning at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (“CERN”) in Geneva working on Deep Learning algorithms for collider particle track reconstruction under Dr. Maurizio Pierini. Upon returning from Geneva, Jason’s deep interest towards understanding human cognitive phenomena fostered during his time at BU brought him to Artificio, where he’s now working on exploring human affect/aesthetic valence using Deep Learning techniques with Colin Conwell.
Jason is also a photographer.
Diego Canez 🇵🇪
Diego is a backend and devops engineer with experience in building scalable systems using AWS. He is currently preparing to apply for a Masters degree in Artificial Intelligence, given his interest in biologically-inspired computer vision. He holds a Bachelors degree in Computer Science from Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología in Lima, Perú.
Diego also enjoys cooking and baking bread.
Daniel Alcantara 🇵🇪
Daniel Alcantara is a passionate UI/UX designer who is interested in creating the exceptional experience of digital workflows for clients who have specific needs. His goal is to create digitally innovative products that are not only aesthetically beautiful, but also intuitive and accesible for a wide variety of users. He enjoys collaborating with multi-disciplinary teams and learning more about design techniques to improve hiw workflow.
He is a Systems Engineer by training which has led him to think about UI/UX from a principled point of view. He is currently baseed in Trujillo, Peru with his brother David with whom he co-leads the UI/UX team.
David Alcantara 🇵🇪
David Alcántara is a UI/UX designer with experience in Industrial Engineering. His focus is based on creating solutions that satisfy client needs in addition to the technical load that a project may demand. His background as an industrial engineer has taught him to optimize and analyze several processess that allow him to create intuitive interfaces.
David is also a fan of collaborative efforts with different software developers and computer scientists to create impactful solutions. David is also co-leading the UI/UX team with his older brother Daniel. David is based in Trujillo, Peru.
Business Advisory Board
Ashish is an entrepreneur, tech enthusiast, and lawyer. He received his JD from Harvard Law School, MBA from Harvard Business School, and BA from Yale College. He has founded, worked on, and advised ventures in fields ranging from electric vehicles to health IT, media tech, consumer electronics, AR/VR, haptics, machine learning, retail tech, and medical imaging. As a lawyer, he has represented a variety of clients, including a leading chipmaker in its global patent litigation against the largest US smartphone maker.
Ashish has also presented his research at, or published in, IEEE Haptics, IEEE GEM, Journal of Law and the Biosciences, American Academy of Neurology, and American Physical Society.
You can find his website here.
Scientific Advisory Board
Patrick Mineault, PhD is a neurotechnologist and founder of xcorr consulting. Previously a data scientist at Google, research scientist at Meta, and founder of a medtech startup, his work straddles industrial and academic fields. His research in NeuroAI has been published in NeurIPS, Neuron, PNAS and the Journal of Neuroscience.
Patrick is also internationally known for writing about NeuroAI, and explaining what it is -- a new scientific movement that rather than using neuroscience as inspiration to improve AI, uses AI as gateway to understand Neuroscientific systems -- a central thesis that is aligned to the goals of Artificio in Vision.
You can find his research here.
Scientific Collaborators
Ratan is a postdoctoral research associate at the McGovern Institute of Brain Research, with Jim DiCarlo and Nancy Kanwisher at MIT. He obtained his PhD in 2016 from the Centre for Neuroscience, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore - India, where he was advised by S.P. Arun. At IISc he investigated the dynamics of invariant object representations and the computations by which information about object identity and image attributes combine in the macaque inferior temporal cortex. He is currently broadly interested in understanding the neural basis of visual object recognition in the ventral visual cortex in humans and non-human primates. He has published his scientific research in PNAS, Journal of Neurophysiology, Journal of Neuroscience and eNeuro, and is one of the co-founders of SVRHM.
Ratan is also a recent winner of the prestigious NIH and National Health Institute K99/R00 award.
You can find his CV here.
Nazim is currently a Researcher within the Surgical Planning Lab (Boston, MA), a unit of Harvard Medical School and the Radiology Department of Brigham and Women's Hospital. The overaching span of his work revolves around image-guided simulation, augmented reality for deformable objects and 3D shape recovery of non-rigid surfaces with an application to surgery. Currently,he works with Sarah Frisken and is also a member of the GolbyLab and the National Center for Image Guided Therapy (NCIGT). Before joining the Surgical Planning Lab he was a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at IHU Strasbourg (France). He prepared his Ph.D. on augmented reality for hepatic surgery using soft-tissue simulation at the University of Lille (France) under the supervision of Marie-odile Berger, Stephane Cotin and Jeremie Dequidt.
Nazim's work is one of the world's leading experts using the SOFA framework.
You can find his CV here.
Tyler is currently in the last stretch of completing his PhD in Psychology at Stanford University's Wu Tsai Neuroscience Institute where he is jointly advised by Dan Yamins and Anthony Wagner. After dropping out of high school, Tyler began organizing with social and environmental justice movements throughout the United States and Sub-Saharan Africa. He returned to school at age 22; first attending Miami Dade Community College, then continuing his scientific training at Columbia University, the Max Planck Institute, and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. As an NSF Graduate Research Fellow at Stanford, his PhD integrates biologically plausible computational models, neural data, and animal behavior, in order to better understand the neurobiology of memory. It is Tyler’s hope that understanding these principles will -- alongside more just social institutions -- enable us to develop more grounded healing practices.
Tyler has recently published a game-changing article on the mechanisms of object perception in humans.
You can find his CV here.
Junior Scientific Fellows
Kiara Rodriguez 🇵🇪
Kiara Rodriguez has recently received the Artificio Fellowship. She is currently doing his last semester of Electronic Engineering at Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería in Lima, Perú. During her academic path, she has developed diverse research projects related to computer vision, embedded systems and IoT.
She will be participating in the REPU 2023 program at the branch of Computer Science. Her research project will be done at the Embedded and Networked group in Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. She will be developing the project named “Deploy a testbed / experimental setup for VLC (Visible Light Communication) or VLP (Visible Light Positioning) using robots”, the aim is to implement VLC and VLP communication in a teleoperated vehicle to avoid obstacles.
Kiara enjoys drawing and playing the ukulele.
Daniel Menacho 🇵🇪
Daniel Menacho is a research assistant at the Embedded and Networked Group in TU Delft Netherlands and a mentee at REPU. He recently finished his BSc. Mechatronics Engineering at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. His passion to become a researcher was influenced by his mother, now he has four papers published. He participates in aerospatial projects related to ROVER and CANSAT at his university. Furthermore, he and his mates had developed a telemarketing robot and underwater photography device, the latter uses the photogrammetry method to build 3D models of underwater scenes (reefs, boats, buildings) from images.
Daniel enjoys taking photos of nature (landscapes and birds) in his free time.
Fiorela Manco 🇵🇪
Fiorela completed her Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering at Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas. In 2022, she worked at Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour as an intern, under the guidance of Antonis Asiminas, Ph.D. In this internship, she participated in a project that intersects behavioral neuroscience and Computer Vision by developing an algorithm that detects the pose estimation of rodents in experimental tasks.
She is working at the Neuroengineering lab at Lund University as part of the REPU internship 2023 cohort. Her research will focus on EEG/EMG data acquisition, data analysis, use of Brain-Computer Interfaces, and Machine Learning for bioelectrical signals.
You can find her CV here.
Nicole Flores-Pretell 🇵🇪
Nicole Flores-Pretell is in the final stages of earning her Bachelor's degree in Biology at the Cayetano Heredia Peruvian University. Nicole has received Artificio and UPCH scholarships for a 3-month internship led by Carl-Johan Hörberg at Professor Fredrik Johansson's lab. This project focuses on studying the formation of connections between neuronal populations using guided axonal growth through microchannels. Nicole is interested in understanding how information is coded and decoded through different levels of biological organization using an integrative mathematical model. Due to this, her previous experience was as a junior researcher in the Laboratory of Neurocomputation, Social Simulation, and Complex Systems at UAC, where she worked on a neuronal morphology model under the supervision of adviser Enver Oruro. Furthermore, she has been writing a short article about it, and she will continue to work on her mathematical model during the VSRP internship with Professor Gabriel Wittum at KAUST.
In her free time, Nicole enjoys reading while trying different brews of coffee.
Daniel Ibáñez 🇵🇪
Daniel holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. He is currently a research assistant in Dr. Piechnik’s research group at the University of Oxford, where he focuses on the application of Deep Learning for medical imaging. He has a strong passion for AI research and Data Science, and has a software engineering background.
His research accomplishments include receiving second best paper in a workshop at the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR 2022). Furthermore, he has professional experience as a Data Scientist at RIMAC Insurance, where he developed analytical solutions using Machine Learning.
In his free time, Daniel enjoys playing football and the drums, as well as hiking.
Artificio is currently operating virtually, and plans to continue to do so in the future. However, in the near future, we will be organizing retreats twice a year for the team to exchange research ideas and forge stronger relationships within the work-place.