Dr. Samantha Wood’s research is at the intersection of cognitive sciences and Artificial Intelligence and is focused on situating computational models from AI in virtual animal bodies to test how different components of embodied systems (e.g., neural mechanisms, the environment, body morphologies) drive the behavior of an entire organism with the aim to build predictive, integrative, and embodied models for psychology and neuroscience. Since December 2023, Dr. Wood has not only made progress on multiple research projects, but she was also invited as a speaker for the highly prestigious “the Electrical and Computer Engineering NYU Tandon Seminar Series on Modern AI” series, which features the most influential researchers in the field and development of AI. In addition, she was selected to participate in the Bloomington
Symposia: Intelligence, which is a select working group of IU Bloomington faculty experts working together to examine the epistemological, methodological, and conceptual intricacies associated with intelligence.

AnalytiXIN funding has supported the development of Dr. Wood’s research by providing funding for PhD research assistance, participation in local AnalytiXIN focused convenings and national conferences to learn from and collaborate with researchers and allowed her to build new controlled-rearing chambers for studying curiosity and decision making in newborn animals and machines.