The Frontiers Forum, titled “Sensation and Motivation, invited USC students to listen to 15 university professors and researchers from all over the country. The forum is dedicated to fostering collaboration between researchers and students, as well as presenting the latest research in neuroscience.
As part of the Chen Institute’s commitment to an interdisciplinary approach to medical research, many of the speakers talked about the role of emerging technologies, specifically artificial intelligence, in neuroscience.
Stephanie Le, the director of conferences for the Chen Institute, said, “the Chen Institute was started in 2016 with a billion dollar commitment to neuroscience.”
USC physiology and neuroscience professor Li Zhang helped organize the event and spoke about his research on the social behavior of mice. Professor Zhang said that AI has always been part of this event, but there was certainly more of an emphasis this year.
“This year is more than 1/3 about AI,” Zhang said. “So I think this...forum is just really (to) promote the interaction between people in AI and the people in neuroscience, and to develop and to talk about what’s the cutting edge questions we need to go for, which is there’s no answer yet.”
Stephanie Le also touched on how the Chen Institute adapted this year’s forum to reflect the increasing presence of AI in medical research.
“In the past, we were really focused on neuroscience and how to find applications and research that would further that space. But now we’re finding that AI tools can also greatly enhance the neuroscience arena,” Le said.
Zoe Donaldson came all the way from Boulder, Colorado to talk to students about her research in, yes, mice monogamy. Although her study is quite strange, Donaldson hoped that students would take home an appreciation of the natural world, as well as an understanding of how nature and AI can come together for groundbreaking research about the human mind.
“I think when I was a student, we won’t say how long ago that was, I could not have envisioned where we would be today,” Donaldson said, “with the intersection of sort of technology, neuroscience and our understanding of natural behavior.”
The Chen Institute hopes the forum will continue to build the bridge between neuroscience and AI. The engagement between professors and students will hopefully foster collaboration necessary for uncovering preventative treatments and underlying causes of neurological disorders.
Le invites student listeners who are curious about the intersection of AI and healthcare to come to next year’s forum, which will likely happen at the end of April 2026.