Professor Eleni Vasilaki holds the Chair in Bioinspired Machine Learning at the University of Sheffield's School of Computer Science, where she serves as Head of the Machine Learning research group and member of the Complex Systems Modelling research group. She joined as Lecturer in 2009 and became Professor in 2016. Education includes: Bachelor's in Informatics and Telecommunications from University of Athens Master's in Microelectronics from University of Athens DPhil in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from University of Sussex Research focuses on developing novel machine learning techniques inspired by biological principles, particularly in reinforcement learning and reservoir computing methods. Her team collaborates with material scientists and engineers to design neuromorphic computing hardware. Publications demonstrate strong emphasis on neuromorphic computing, machine learning applications in neuroscience, reservoir computing systems, and computational modeling of biological processes. Recent work addresses device-agnostic modeling, physical neural networks, and stochastic computing platforms. Significant grants include: MARCH: Magnetic Architectures for Reservoir Computing Hardware (£936,815, Co-PI) ActiveAI - active learning and selective attention for robust AI (£953,584, Co-PI) Modeling probabilistic reinforcement learning in Drosophila (Google, £50,769, PI) CausalXRL: Causal explanations in Reinforcement Learning (£309,915, PI) Brains on Board: Neuromorphic Control of Flying Robots (£2,128,934, Co-PI) Leads the Machine Learning research group and collaborates with the Complex Systems Modelling group, focusing on brain-inspired computing architectures and neuromorphic hardware design.
