Headshot of Kenneth Harris.

Kenneth Harris

Professor of quantitative neuroscience
University College London

Kenneth Harris is professor of quantitative neuroscience at University College London. Together with Matteo Carandini, he co-directs the Cortical Processing Laboratory. The aim of the laboratory is to understand the computations performed by neuronal populations in the visual system, the underlying neural circuits and the way these computations lead to perceptual decisions. Current research efforts focus on how cortical populations integrate sensory information with information from within the brain.

Harris received a B.A. and Part III in mathematics from the University of Cambridge in 1993 and a Ph.D. in neural computation from University College London in 1998. He then moved to Rutgers University for postdoctoral work, where he eventually opened a laboratory studying neuronal population activity in the neocortex. He next moved to Imperial College London before joining the faculty at University College London.

Harris received the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship in 2005 and the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award and an EPSRC Leadership Fellowship in 2010. He was named a Burroughs Wellcome Trust Investigator and a Simons Investigator in 2014.

Explore more from The Transmitter

Illustration of a laptop computer superimposed over a scroll.

‘Friction-maxxing’ in school: Students should read primary literature, not AI summaries

Trainees need to learn how to identify a neuroscience paper’s major takeaways and integrate them into their understanding. This skill doesn’t come from outsourcing the work to large language models.

By Nora Bradford
26 March 2026 | 5 min read

Head direction cells stably orient mice to outside world

The cells’ representations show little drift over time—unlike those of other navigation system neurons—and may provide a “rigid backbone” for more flexible sensory and cognitive responses.

By Angie Voyles Askham
25 March 2026 | 0 min watch

Juan Gallego discusses how manifolds are transforming our understanding of the coordination of neuronal population activity

A wealth of evidence supports the view that neural manifolds are real and useful, Gallego says, even if they may not completely solve the age-old mind-body problem.

By Paul Middlebrooks
25 March 2026 | 121 min listen