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Anil Seth is a world-renowned neuroscientist, a best-selling author, and a highly sought-after keynote speaker with expertise in the science of consciousness, artificial intelligence, and art-science collaboration.

He is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex, Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Program on Brain, Mind and Consciousness, a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Investigator, and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness. He has published more than 200 research papers and is recognised as being in the top 1% of researchers worldwide in his area.

Anil is known for his work on perception as a ‘controlled hallucination’, and for his theory of consciousness which emphasises the deep connections between conscious experience and our nature as living machines.

His public-oriented book – Being You: A New Science of Consciousness – was an instant Sunday Times Top 10 Bestseller and a 2021 Book of the Year for The Guardian, The Economist, The New Statesman, The Financial Times, Bloomberg Business. Anil appears regularly on a variety of broadcast and online media, and writes for outlets including Aeon, The Guardian, Granta, New Scientist, and Scientific American. His other books include 30 Second Brain (Ivy Press, 2014) and EyeBenders (with Clive Gifford, winner of the 2015 Royal Society Young Person’s Book Prize).

His main-stage TED talk, ‘Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality’, has been viewed over thirteen million times and is one of their most popular science talks. Currently, he is lead scientist on an ambitious science-art collaboration called Dreamachine, a neuroscience-inspired collective immersive experience that has reached more than 30,000 people.

Anil’s mission is to advance the science of consciousness, to use its insights for the benefit of society, technology and medicine, and to make this fascinating and central area of research understandable and exciting for audiences – and potential collaborators – of all kinds.