How do we perceive, think, imagine, and plan?
Erin studies these capacities in human and animal minds, working across psychology, computer science, and neuroscience to ask what minds are capable of and what they are made of. She applies the same approach to artificial intelligence (AI) systems, which are increasingly discovered (data-driven) instead of designed (engineered), asking how these artificial minds compare to human and animal minds, and whether the comparison can teach us something about our own.
Erin Grant is an Assistant Professor in Psychology and Computing Science at the University of Alberta and a Fellow at Amii. Her research bridges psychology, neuroscience, and computer science to understand how minds, brains, and machines learn to perceive the world, structure their knowledge, and act towards their goals.
Erin earned her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 2022 with support from Canada’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. During her Ph.D., Erin spent time at OpenAI, Google Brain, and DeepMind. Before joining the University of Alberta, Erin was an Assistant Professor & Faculty Fellow at New York University, and a Senior Research Fellow at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit and the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at University College London.
Erin currently serves on the Women in Machine Learning Board of Directors and is an active member of the organizing committees for ICLR, NeurIPS, and CCN.