Ranjith Jaganathan

Ranjith Jaganathan is a cognitive scientist and AI researcher dedicated to exploring the intersections of cognition, technology, and human interaction. He is an adjunct faculty in the Consciousness Studies Programme at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) in Bengaluru, and a cognitive neuroscience researcher at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Pilani - K. K. Birla Goa Campus, in the Department of Biological Sciences. Previously, he has held research positions at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK), the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) in Bengaluru, and New York University (NYU) Abu Dhabi. His interdisciplinary research spans computational modeling, machine (deep) learning, visual perception, and cognitive neuroscience, with projects in the areas of visual scene perception, emotional scene processing, visual word recognition, corpus-based psycholinguistics, computational psychiatry, dementia research, behavioural game theory, and recently consumer neuroscience and AI. He is passionate about understanding brain algorithms and exploring the missing links between the top-down and bottom-up approaches to computation. He is also intrigued by how advanced technologies can mimic and augment human cognitive processes. This let him engage with profound questions about what it means to be human, the nature of self, agency, and consciousness. He has taught courses on cognitive processes (basic & advanced) at IIT Kanpur and served as a TA for the Neuromatch Academy’s Deep Learning and NeuroAI summer courses for two years, and also taught the Cognitive Science & Research course as a visiting faculty (Strate School of Design). Ranjith is also a research consultant on mental health tech and completed his international fellowship in Health Technology Assessment (HTA) from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM). He is an advocate for applying evidence-based AI technology in mental health, emphasizing precision psychiatry and digital interventions.