Demba Ba

Demba Ba is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Bioengineering at Harvard University's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). He serves as the Dean of Undergraduate Studies for Bioengineering since 2020 and joined SEAS in 2015 after a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT (2007-2014). His research bridges computational neuroscience and artificial intelligence, focusing on sparse signal representations, interpretable AI, and neural network theory. Fluent in Wolof, Fulani, French, Spanish, English, and Arabic, he also contributes to signal processing, statistical learning, and dynamic systems.

• PhD in EECS from MIT (2011)
• MS in EECS from MIT (2006)
• BS in Electrical Engineering from University of Maryland (2004)

His work explores connections between sparse coding and neural networks through publications in top venues like NeurIPS, ICML, and IEEE Transactions. Articles emphasize convolutional dictionary learning, Bayesian frameworks, and applications to neural data analysis. He has received the 2016 Sloan Fellowship in Neuroscience and 2021 Roslyn Abramson Award for undergraduate teaching excellence.

• 2021: Gaussian process convolutional dictionary learning (Submitted)
• 2020: Deep residual auto-encoders for dictionary learning
• 2018: Multitaper time-frequency analysis for neuroscience

Demba Ba leads the CRISP research group and holds advisory roles at Harvard. His awards include:

• 2021 Roslyn Abramson Award
• 2016 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow
• 2010 ICME Best Student Paper Award

He teaches courses like ES 201 (Decision Theory) and ES 157 (Biomedical Signal Processing), while maintaining interdisciplinary collaborations in neuroscience, machine learning, and signal processing.