Jeff Orchard

Dr. Jeff Orchard is a Professor in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo and a core member of the Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience. Professor Orchard and his student form the Neurocognitive Computing Lab. Through computational experiments and mathematical analysis, they try to understand the neurological basis of perception, cognition, and behaviour.

Professor Orchard's main research interest is computational neuroscience, using mathematical models and computer simulations of neural networks to understand how the brain works. Guided by both theory and anatomy, he is building large-scale neural networks based on computational theories of the brain, such as predictive coding, to uncover the way we perceive the world. His research also includes projects in decision-making network models of the basal ganglia, unsupervised learning of vision networks, spatial navigation, and population coding.