How we got into Comp Neuro

I didn't pick in the first place honestly. Rewind to December 2023, I stumbled upon a Summer Sem opportunity at Oxford... for PPE, I liked PPE, its what I intended to at Oxford orignally before I was rejected for my undergrad - made it as far as applying and getting a college alloted though 🤞, anyways, it was focused around August, I'd focus around Globalism in my course - an area of interest. I've been geographically stoked all things geo, Globalism is the answer to integrating LIMCs to the world, famous with India's 1991 stint, I wondered what'd be up in a new economy with TAI with Globalism.

Anyways, months passed, myself being myself. My interests changed.

So much was happening in Engineering worlwide, in my backdoor, my own company was a collaborator for the toilet of the future.

A marvel that's definently going to change a lot of things sewer systems, waste & toilets & tech.

We've been building tech - heck, I've been PMing facility management solutions for a month by February.

But I did have a non-technical influence phase though, around March, I'd read so much about AI governance I'd spoken to burecrats about political-ai-governance applicability -> +1 to PPE.

But that rabbit hole of reading about AI Governance doesn't move me to being pro-safe-ai completely pilled AI-research oriented person. It does the opposite. Makes me inclined to transhumanism.

I've always wanted to live forever. It's been one of those childhood whims that I used as an opener on every date I went on (few, me being me) but yes. In fact once, my opener story for a late night conversation with a partner when it was getting dry was narrating the whole Nick Bostrom Fable of the Dragon Tyrant with every detail. I'm no great storyteller, but boy could I tell that story.

Anyways, a big element of the fable was that something natural isn't necessary right, and human progress can augment natural things, processes and structures.

AI will out-do us, cyborgs and and transhumans would be our way of advancing ourselves, being one with mind & machine.

Anyways that's further up the dream sci-fi idea box.

But compute is getting better, models are getting better, 'ai' (a term nicky case wouldn't like me using) is getting better. That means a massive application for Computational Neuroscience. Brains and Neural Networks, computationally are so closley linked we can practically now work on researching both collaboratively and push them forward simaltaneuoulsly.

It's a great application of tech, everything about neurotech at the moment posiitvely is.

And the best part, it's the avenue of the future, an overlooked, undertrialed, research heavy tech space that can have a lot going on if rocks are unturned.

It's young, I'm young, it's great to grow older with.

A general fascination did exist for this years before too.

In 2021, I spent a small stint working with a Neurotech startup-project thing for about 2 weeks, this was when I was very new to the broader world, plainly running a youtube media house & doing projects around rainwater. I'd come across Nikhil's NeuraliX a BCI development company.

A few years later, Nexteen and its hypothesis of being acceleratred by Emerging tech stuck with me. My mindset for thriving in the space was solid - as cringe as this sounds, this helped me get an understanding of what it takes for the field and what the best way to top-down it, and bottom-up it simaltaenuously, while positioning yourself meant. I.e, making projects, adding value with what I have, and having a learning attitude. Plus, growing faster, noticing trends and being with exciting people that startuppy about the space. I had the keys.

I had found the field.

Essentially, I'd actually found the field when I went to change my course. I knew i HAD to do something technical, they had a compneuro option availaible (while of course, I'd have picked something sparkly like symbolic systems if it was availaible, but this was just meant to be.)

Picked it up, read enough before the semester, picked up the required coding, brain research skills and was set to get in.

And the rest is thereafter.

But the best takeaway for someone reading this, is that's fascinating to do something technical, especially if it's your calling, and even if you don't have any background in it. Just try.

Did I mention the background part?

I studied Commerce oriented subjects for my A-levels equivalents, 11th and 12th grades, in uni I was doing a business degree, at the new university I was about to go to (parallely, I was transferring to Ashoka, a liberal arts & sciences uni) I was going to do PPE. I wasn't even app-building capable with Python from 0 myself. Yet I just went in.