Demba Ba, Ph.D.

Ba is an associate professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering in Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, where he directs the CRISP group. Recently, he has taken a keen interest in the connection between artificial neural networks and sparse signal processing. His group leverages this connection to solve data-driven unsupervised learning problems in neuroscience to understand the principles of hierarchical representations of sensory signals in the brain and develop explainable AI. In 2016, he received a research fellowship in neuroscience from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. In 2021, Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences awarded him the Roslyn Abramson Award for outstanding undergraduate teaching.