Kohitij Kar is an assistant professor in the Department of Biology at York University and a Canada Research Chair in Visual Neuroscience. Previously, he was a research scientist in the lab of James DiCarlo at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before joining the DiCarlo Lab, he completed his Ph.D. in the Department of Behavioral and Neural Sciences at Rutgers University under Bart Krekelberg.

As humans, we can seamlessly interact with the world around us thanks to our remarkably sophisticated visual system. These interactions depend on our brain’s ability to translate the images we see. But understanding the brain’s sophisticated computations has been a challenge. Kar’s research aims to uncover the inner workings of the primate visual system. He and his research team perform detailed circuit-level neural measurements in nonhuman primates and relate them to specific visual behaviors. They are using their findings to develop artificial intelligence systems that mimic the primate brain to develop treatment strategies for mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions, including autism.

Kar’s work has been published in Science, Nature Neuroscience and Neuron, and he has presented his findings at international machine learning conferences, including Neural Information Processing Systems conferences. He has also recently become a SFARI Investigator after receiving a Simons Foundation Pilot Award to develop a nonhuman primate model of autism.