Daniel Mark Wolpert (born 8 September 1963) is a British medical doctor, neuroscientist and engineer, who has made important contributions in computational biology. He was Professor of Engineering at the University of Cambridge from 2005, and also became the Royal Society Noreen Murray Research Professorship in Neurobiology from 2013. He is now Professor of Neurobiology at Columbia University.
Wolpert was educated at the Hall School and Westminster School. He went on to the University of Cambridge to study mathematics, but after only a year he shifted to medicine, as it seemed to him "that medics were having much more fun than mathematicians." He completed a Bachelor of Arts in medical sciences in 1985, then completed his Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (BM BCh) in 1988, and PhD in physiology in 1992 from the University of Oxford.
Wolpert pursued computational neuroscience as postdoctoral researcher (1992–1994) and McDonnell-Pew Fellow (1994–1995) in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Daniel Wolpert on his qualification as medical doctor worked as Medical House officer in Oxford, in 1988. After completion of his research in 1995, he joined the faculty of Sobell Department of Neurophysiology, Institute of Neurology, University College London, as a Lecturer. He became Reader in Motor Neuroscience in 1999, and full Professor in 2002. He was appointed to Professor of Engineering at the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, in 2005. In 2013, he also became the Royal Society Noreen Murray Research Professorship in Neurobiology. In 2018, he moved to Columbia University to become Professor of Neurobiology.
Wolpert was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2012, his nomination reads Daniel Wolpert is a world leader in the computational study of sensorimotor control and learning, transforming our understanding of how the brain controls movement. Combining theoretical and behavioural work, he has placed the field of sensorimotor control firmly within the probabilistic domain and shown how neural noise plays a pivotal role in determining both how we process information during action and how we generate actions. His empirical discoveries and theoretical work on internal models have shown how ubiquitous they are for a range of core processes from motor learning, through sensory processing to social cognition; and how disorders of internal models can lead to neuropsychological disorders. Other awards include:
1982–1985 Thomas Cannon Brooke's Scholarship for Mathematics, Trinity Hall, Cambridge
1989–1992 Senior Scholarship, Lincoln College, Oxford
1992–1995 Fulbright Scholarship
2004 Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci)
2005 Swartz foundation Mind-Brain Lecture, Stony Brook University
2005 Royal Society Francis Crick Prize Lecture
2005 Professorial Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge
2007 Alice and Joseph Brooks International Lecture, Harvard University
2007 Annual Cognitive Science Lecture, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
2009 Fred Kavli Distinguished International Scientist Lecture, Society for Neuroscience
2010 Golden Brain Award of the Minerva Foundation
2012 Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS)
2012 Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award (for seven years)