Rosalyn J. Moran is an Irish and British neuroscientist and computational psychiatrist. She is deputy director of the

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of King George IV and the Duke of Wellington. In 1836, King's ...

Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Her research looks to understand neural algorithms through brain connectivity.

Early life and education

Moran grew up in Ireland, where she studied applied mathematics at the local boys school. Moran was an undergraduate and postgraduate student in electronic engineering at the University College Dublin. Her doctoral research applied information theory to biomedical signal processing. During her PhD, she met a scientist who was combining electrical and chemical analysis of schizophrenia, and became interested in pursuing a career in neuroscience. She was a postdoctoral researcher at University College London supported by the

Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging The 'Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging'' at University College London is a world-leading interdisciplinary centre for neuroimaging research based in London, United Kingdom. Researchers at the Centre use expertise to investigate how the ...

Research and career

Moran moved to Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and Research Institute in 2012, where she spent four years as an assistant professor. She returned to the United Kingdom in 2016 and joined the University of Bristol as a senior lecturer. In 2018, she was made associate professor at

. She became deputy director of the King's Institute for Artificial Intelligence in 2022. Moran's research combines artificial intelligence, Bayesian inference and experimental neurobiology to understand brain connectivity and neural processing. She is interested in how neurotransmitters (e.g. noradrenaline, serotonin) in decision making. She uses deep networks to model diseases, with a focus on neurodegenerative diseases and schizophrenia. Moran has investigated the

free energy principle The free energy principle is a mathematical principle in biophysics and cognitive science that provides a formal account of the representational capacities of physical systems: that is, why things that exist look as if they track properties of the ...

, an all-purpose mode of the brain and human behaviour. The free energy principle is based on surprise minimisation, brains work to minimise free energy. Moran has argued that the free energy principle offers an alternative rationale for generative artificial intelligence.

Selected publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Moran, Rosalyn Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Alumni of University College Dublin Academics of King's College London Irish women psychiatrists Irish psychiatrists Irish women neuroscientists 21st-century Irish women scientists Irish emigrants to the United Kingdom