Bradley Voytek

Professor & HDSI Founding Faculty Fellow


Cognitive Science


Bradley Voytek is a Professor in the Department of Cognitive Science, the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute, and the Neurosciences Graduate Program at UC San Diego. He is an Alfred P. Sloan Neuroscience Research Fellow and a Kavli Fellow of the National Academies of Sciences, as well as a founding faculty member of the UC San Diego Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute and the Undergraduate Data Science program. After his PhD at UC Berkeley, he joined Uber as their first data scientist—when it was a 10-person startup—where he helped build their data science strategy and team. His research program uses neural modeling and simulation, along with large-scale data mining and machine learning techniques, to understand how neurons communicate with one another to give rise to complex human cognition, and how alterations in communication underlie disease and age-related cognitive decline. He is an advocate for promoting science to the public and speaks extensively with students at all grade levels about the joys of scientific research and discovery. In addition to his academic publications, his outreach work has appeared in outlets ranging from Scientific American and NPR to the San Diego Comic-Con. He is currently writing a book with neuroscientist Ashley Juavinett regarding the powerful future of data science in neuroscience discovery, though his most important contribution to science is his book with fellow neuroscientist Tim Verstynen, “Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?”, by Princeton University Press.