Hi, I'm Pranav.
I'm a doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford advised by Prof. Ben Seymour (NDCN, IBME) and co-advised by Prof. Ioannis Havoutis (ORI). My background is in engineering and I'm a Neuro-AI researcher working on fundamental problems with applications to safe AI and AI for healthcare. I previously interned at Nvidia where I worked on scalable distributed deep learning.
I'm introverted. I'm a cheerful pessimist. I try to keep thinking about conflicting ideas for longer periods and I find paradoxes deeply interesting. Much of my work is very interdisciplinary and I'm quite comfortable being an outsider in a new field of study.
I sketch sometimes (digitally) and enjoy electronic music and swimming. I am an Indian native from Pune city and I now live in Oxford, UK.
You can read my blog here :)
News
I'll be presenting a Spotlight presentation and a poster on our work on Quantitative Motor Testing at the Podium Institute Conference.
My work on Neural Associative Skill Memories has been accepted at 5th International Workshop on Active Inference (IWAI 2024) as a Spotlight presentation.
My DPhil's first preprint "Balancing safety and efficiency in human decision making" is now in eLife.
I will be giving an invited talk at 1st Oxford Health BRC Pain Conference (March 2024) on ’Virtual reality and Pain: From theory to practice’
Research vision
Key motivations in Neuro-AI research are two-fold, using advancements from AI to generate useful hypotheses for neuroscience and using insights from neuroscience to develop better algorithms for AI. With these motivations in mind, my research spans the following three directions:
Safe Natural Intelligence
How do animals keep themselves safe? (e.g. safe exploration, self-preservation)
Safe Artificial Intelligence
How can we make AI trustworthy, interpretable, and aligned with human values?
AI and computational neuroscience for healthcare
New technologies for better assessment and treatments to improve human health and well-being (with a recent focus on chronic pain)
Selected Publications
Safe exploration and human reinforcement learning
Optimal composition of multiple values for dopamine-mediated efficient, safe and stable learning
in preparation
Pranav Mahajan, Ben Seymour
Developed a theory that enables optimal composition of multiple value functions to drive reliable behaviour and efficient off-policy adaptation to dynamically changing rewards
Reconciled contradicting hypotheses about the computation of the tail of the striatum (threat prediction error and action prediction error), providing a unifying normative account
Balancing safety and efficiency in human decision making
eLife (2024) and COSYNE conference (2022)
Pranav Mahajan, Shuangyi Tong, Sang Wan Lee, Ben Seymour
Formulated a safety-efficiency trade-off in human reinforcement learning, proposing an uncertainty-based solution.
Designed and performed a Virtual Reality experiment to test the model and performed hierarchical Bayesian modeling of human behavior.
Computational neuroscience and neuro-robotics
Neural Associative Skill Memories for safer robotics and modelling human sensorimotor repertoires
5th International Workshop on Active Inference (IWAI 2024) - Spotlight and in preparation
Pranav Mahajan, Mufeng Tang, T. Ed Li, Ioannis Havoutis, Ben Seymour
Developed embodied generative models learned from demonstrations (in PyTorch) for safer robots (Franka Emika Panda arm), implementing fault detection and correction while explaining human sensorimotor experiment findings
Homeostasis After Injury: How Intertwined Inference and Control Underpin Post-Injury Pain and Behaviour
in preparation
Pranav Mahajan, Peter Dayan, Ben Seymour
Theorised homeostasis after injury as planning under partial observability, explaining paradoxes and providing a novel perspective on existing literature.
Enhanced behavioural and neural sensitivity to punishments in chronic pain and fatigue
Brain (2024)
Flavia Mancini, Pranav Mahajan, Anna á V Guttesen, Jakub Onysk, Ingrid Scholtes, Nicholas Shenker, Michael Lee, Ben Seymour
Analyzed chronic pain patient high-dimensional brain data using graph-theoretic measures to predict pain and fatigue levels from insular cortical networks.
Doing what’s not wanted: Conflict in incentives and misallocation of behavioural control can lead to drug-seeking despite adverse outcomes
Addiction Neuroscience (2023)
Pranav Mahajan, Veeky Baths, Boris Gutkin
Algorithmic modelling of addiction as drug-induced hijacking of a hierarchical reinforcement learning algorithm
Quantifying Synchronization in a Biologically Inspired Neural Network
IEEE- International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2021) and Bernstein Conference (2020)
Pranav Mahajan, Advait Rane, Swapna Sasi, Basabdatta Sen Bhattacharya
Developed a toolbox for quantifying synchronization in multi-variate time-series data.
AI for healthcare
Quantitative Movement Testing (QMT)
1st Podium Institute Conference (2024) - Spotlight and in preparation
Pranav Mahajan, Amanda Wall, Eoin Kelleher, Anushka Soni, Ben Seymour
Developed a computer vision pipeline to track movements from handheld video, securing £3,000 in funding for healthy subject and patient trials
Quantitative Cognitive Aversive Testing (QCAT)
Neuromatch Conference (2022)
Pranav Mahajan, Jakub Onysk, Suyi Zhang, Katja Wiech, Flavia Mancini, Ben Seymour
Prepared a suite of mobile-based cognitive tests for pain patients whose behaviour can be modelled using reinforcement learning algorithms
Acoustic and Language Based Deep Learning Approaches for Alzheimer's Dementia Detection From Spontaneous Speech
Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience (2021)
Pranav Mahajan, Veeky Baths
Developed a multimodal deep learning model enriched with targeted features for early Alzheimer’s detection from speech, achieving a 6.25% improvement in accuracy.
Want to get in touch?
Email me at pranav[dot]mahajan[at]ndcn.ox.ac.uk
© Pranav Mahajan