Terrence Sejnowski’s remarkable journey—from a curious physics undergraduate at Case Institute of Technology to one of the world’s most influential neuroscientists and AI pioneers—serves as inspiration not only to Spartans everywhere but also to the broader scientific community.
A native of Cleveland, Sejnowski arrived on campus with an interest in deep-space phenomena such as black holes, gravitational waves and the nebulae that give birth to stars. He said the opportunities at CWRU “let me explore not just physics but also computer science,” giving him access to resources such as the campus computer center and allowing him to “cut my teeth programming and solving scientific problems.”
After receiving a PhD in physics from Princeton University, that broad foundation would prove critical when his focus turned to the mysteries of the brain. Sejnowski’s joint passions propelled him into computational neuroscience, a field that merges physics, computer science, mathematics and biology to understand how cognition and behavior emerge from neural dynamics.
Sejnowski’s career has been marked by a series of pivotal breakthroughs:
- Co-invention of the Boltzmann machine: In collaboration with Geoffrey Hinton, Sejnowski developed the Boltzmann machine—one of the foundational concepts in artificial neural networks. This innovation catalyzed decades of progress in machine learning and artificial intelligence, ultimately powering technologies such as ChatGPT and generative AI.
- Revolutionizing neuroscience: Sejnowski played a central role in shaping computational and theoretical neuroscience, helping to unlock the principles that govern brain structure, dynamics and the emergence of cognition and behavior. His research has advanced understanding of neural coding, learning algorithms and brain rhythms—work that has influenced fields ranging from psychology to computer science.
- Popular science communication: He is the author and co-author of several influential books that bridge scientific research and the public: The Computational Brain (1992), Liars, Lovers, and Heroes (2002), The Deep Learning Revolution (2018) and ChatGPT and the Future of AI (2024). These works have helped demystify neural networks and AI, making them accessible to readers worldwide. He and Barbara Oakley teamed to create the wildly popular Coursera Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on “Learning how to Learn.”
One of only three living individuals to be elected to all four major U.S. National Academies: Medicine (2008), Sciences (2010), Engineering (2011) and Inventors (2017), Sejnowski was honored in 2024 with the world’s largest brain research prize—the Brain Prize—for “pioneering contributions to the field of computational and theoretical neuroscience and … seminal contributions to our understanding of the principles that govern the brain’s structure, dynamics and the emergence of cognition and behaviour.” In 2025 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
“My life’s work is all based on what I learned in physics at Case,” Sejnowski said. “I had many great professors who gave me the freedom and the opportunity to explore, and that experience has been fundamental to my journey.”