Dr. Samantha Wood is an Assistant Professor in the Informatics Department of the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University Bloomington. She received her B.A. from Harvard University in Social Studies and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in Psychology, with a focus on Brain and Cognitive Science. Dr. Wood works at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive science, with a focus on understanding how brains learn to build perceptual and conceptual knowledge.
Dr. Wood’s research focuses on how newborn brains learn to make sense of the world. What algorithms allow brains (without prior experience or instruction) to convert streams of high-dimensional sensory input into knowledge and adaptive action? Using tools from AI, Dr. Wood formalizes theories from psychology as agent-based models that use deep neural networks to perform the same tasks as humans and animals. By simulating the development of intelligence using artificial agents raised in realistic virtual reality worlds, Dr. Wood aims to build predictive, integrative, and embodied models for psychology and neuroscience.
