(US and Canada) VERSES Technologies Inc., a cognitive computing company specializing in the next generation of artificial intelligence (AI) systems, announced recently that Dr. Karl Friston, Professor of Neuroscience at University College London and Scientific Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, has joined the company as its Chief Scientist. Friston, one of the world’s leading and most cited computational neuroscience and  AI scientists, will direct and oversee the company’s advanced AI research and development.

Friston’s world-leading expertise in the development and application of active inference — which approaches intelligent systems design using nature’s design principles (i.e., the physics and neurobiology of information processing), will be central to the company’s research and development in next-generation AI. 

“It is with great enthusiasm and excitement that we welcome Karl Friston to VERSES as our Chief Scientist,” says Gabriel René, Verses Founder and CEO. “Dr. Friston’s breakthrough work in neuroscience and biologically-inspired AI, known as active inference, aligns beautifully with our vision and mission to enable a “smarter world” where AI powers the applications of the 21st century. As the originator of this principle, it is only fitting that he has a significant role in VERSES AI research and development through their applied uses in product commercialization.”

Friston has had an illustrious and decorated scientific career. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2006 and The Royal Society of Biology in 2012. He received the Weldon Memorial Prize and Medal in 2013 for his remarkable contributions to mathematical biology. Friston was elected a member of EMBO in 2014 and the Academia Europaea in 2015. In 2016, He received the Charles Branch Award for remarkable breakthroughs in brain research and the Organization for Human Brain Mapping’s Glass Brain Award. Friston was ranked the most influential neuroscientist in the world by Semantic Scholar that same year. 

He holds honorary doctorates from York, Zurich, Liège, and Radboud universities.

 “I am delighted and honored to join VERSE,” says Friston. “I have seldom met such a friendly, focused, committed, and right-minded group of colleagues. On a personal note, my appointment as Chief Scientist is exactly the kind of dénouement of my academic career I had hoped for — one that marks the beginning of a new and exciting journey of discovery and enabling.” 

Maxwell Ramstead, Director of Research at VERSES, describes Friston’s appointment as  “an opportunity to introduce active inference to a broader audience and highlight the significant role that we believe it will have in developing the next generation of artificial intelligence systems.”