Li Zhaoping (Chinese: 李兆平) is a Chinese neuroscientist at the

University of Tübingen The University of Tübingen, officially the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen (; ), is a public research university located in the city of Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. The University of Tübingen is one of eleven German Excellenc ...

in Germany. She is the only woman to win the first place in

CUSPEA CUSPEA (China-U.S. Physics Examination and Application, 李政道奖学金) was an examination and admission system used by the physics departments of some American and Canadian universities for graduate school admission from the People's Republic ...

, a 1980s annual national physics admission examination in China, during CUSPEA's 10-year history (1979–1989). She proposed V1 Saliency Hypothesis (V1SH), and is the author of ''Understanding vision: theory, models, and data'' published by

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

Education

Li Zhaoping graduated from

Fudan University Fudan University (FDU) is a public university, national public university in Yangpu, Shanghai, Yangpu, Shanghai, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education (China), Ministry of Education and is co-funded with the Shanghai Municipal ...

in Shanghai in 1984 with a bachelor's degree in physics. During 1984 to 1989, she did her Ph.D. study in physics in

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...

. Her Ph.D. supervisor was

John Hopfield John Joseph Hopfield (born July 15, 1933) is an American physicist and emeritus professor of Princeton University, most widely known for his study of associative neural networks in 1982. He is known for the development of the Hopfield network. ...

Career

After a brief stay in

Fermilab Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located in Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy United States Department of Energy National Labs, national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle phys ...

, Zhaoping was a member of the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including Albert Ein ...

in Princeton in 1990–1992, and then was a postdoctoral fellow in

Rockefeller University The Rockefeller University is a Private university, private Medical research, biomedical Research university, research and graduate-only university in New York City, New York. It focuses primarily on the biological and medical sciences and pro ...

in 1992–1994. In 1998, Li Zhaoping, together with

Geoffrey Hinton Geoffrey Everest Hinton (born 1947) is a British-Canadian computer scientist, cognitive scientist, and cognitive psychologist known for his work on artificial neural networks, which earned him the title "the Godfather of AI". Hinton is Univer ...

and Peter Dayan, co-founded the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit in

University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...

. Currently, Li Zhaoping is a professor at the

. She is also the head of the department of Sensory and Sensorimotor Systems in the

Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics The Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics is located in Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is one of 80 institutes in the Max Planck Society (Max Planck Gesellschaft). It was founded in 1968. The institute is studying signal a ...

Personal life

She is married to Prof. Peter Dayan, the director of the

Research and theory

Li Zhaoping is known as the creator of the

V1 Saliency Hypothesis The V1 Saliency Hypothesis, or V1SH (pronounced ‘vish’) is a theory about V1, the Visual cortex#Primary visual cortex (V1), primary visual cortex (V1). It proposes that the V1 in primates creates a saliency map of the visual field to guide vis ...

, V1SH (pronounced 'vish'), that the primary visual cortex (V1) in primates creates a saliency map of the visual field to guide visual attention or gaze shifts exogenously. Proposed in the late-1990s, V1SH was unpopular initially, since it was contrary to the main and popular idea that the frontal and parietal areas of the brain are responsible for the saliency map. As V1SH gathered more experimental support, Zhaoping became more sought after for keynote or invited speeches in international conferences, and V1SH rises from being unpopular to being controversial. Some report experimental data for the theory, while others report evidence against it. It is argued that if V1SH holds, then the framework to understand how our brain solves the vision problem should be substantially changed, as described by the Central-peripheral theory which in turn has its own experimental support. Zhaoping also used a model to propose that feedback from the olfactory cortex to the olfactory bulb serves to segment odors from background for individual odor recognition and carries out other top-down controls, this proposal predicts and explains a diversity of behavioral and neural data.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Li, Zhaoping 1964 births Living people California Institute of Technology alumni Chinese women neuroscientists Fudan University alumni Academic staff of the University of Tübingen Academics of University College London Max Planck Institute directors