![a photo of Sounak Banerjee](/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/2020-10/Sounak%20Banerjee1.jpg?itok=Gd2SIX71)
Area of Research / Interest: Human Expertise
Undergraduate Education Institution: University of Calcutta
Undergraduate Major: Computer Science
Biography: I was a Computer Science major in my undergrad, none of my courses involved Cognitive Science. During my masters, I became involved in Machine Learning research, at that time Reinforcement Learning systems were gaining traction in the field. I was impressed by the fact that these RL models learnt to walk, move objects, and perform incredible feats in simulated environments. However, the more papers I read, the more I was convinced there was something missing from these systems. Their ability to learn and generalize existing knowledge was still far behind human abilities. This got me interested in Cognitive Science, more specifically human learning and expertise.