PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Nabil Imam

Nabil Imam is a researcher in machine learning and theoretical neuroscience who studies neural coding and computation, from brain-inspired chips to the wiring of mammalian brains. A Cornell Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering came in 2014, and the ASYNC 2012 Best Paper Award went to a digital neurosynaptic core paper with him as first author. At Intel, he and Cornell's Thomas Cleland reported an olfactory circuit on the Loihi chip in March 2020 that learns a scent from one exposure, and in 2020 he and Barbara Finlay published a PNAS model of how cortical areas organize themselves. After joining the Georgia Tech faculty in January 2022, he led a 2026 Science Advances study of 182 mammalian species that finds a trade-off between the neocortex and limbic structures. He is an assistant professor in Georgia Tech's School of Computational Science and Engineering.

Timeline

  1. 2012

    Best paper at ASYNC 2012

    He leads the author list, with Filipp Akopyan, John Arthur, Paul Merolla, Rajit Manohar and Dharmendra Modha, on 'A Digital Neurosynaptic Core Using Event-Driven QDI Circuits,' which wins the Best Paper Award at ASYNC 2012. The Cornell-IBM design combines 256 integrate-and-fire neurons, 1024 input axons and 1024×256 synapses in 4.2mm2 of silicon.

  2. 2014

    Cornell PhD and TrueNorth

    He receives a Ph.D. from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Cornell University in 2014, with minors in neuroscience and applied mathematics. He is among the authors of the 2014 Science paper on a chip with one million spiking neurons, and of the IBM and Cornell team's Gordon Bell Prize finalist paper at Supercomputing 2014 on TrueNorth, a 4,096-core, 1 million neuron processor. He later works at IBM Research and Intel Labs, on the design teams of IBM's TrueNorth and Intel's Loihi.

  3. March 2020

    An electronic nose on Loihi

    As an Intel senior research scientist, he and Cornell's Thomas Cleland report in Nature Machine Intelligence in March 2020 an olfactory circuit that runs on Intel's Loihi neuromorphic chip. The system, built around 72 chemical sensors, learns the scent of a chemical after one exposure and identifies it when other scents mask it.

  4. 2020

    Self-organizing cortical areas

    In 2020, he and Cornell's Barbara Finlay publish a PNAS paper with a growing-network model in which characteristic features of secondary visual areas develop from activity patterns in primary visual cortex. At the time, he is a researcher in Yale's Computer Systems Laboratory and at Intel's Neuromorphic Computing Laboratory.

  5. January 2022

    Joining the Georgia Tech faculty

    He joins the Georgia Tech faculty in January 2022 and works in the School of Computational Science and Engineering.

  6. November 2025

    The NeuroScale architecture

    In November 2025, he coauthors a Nature Communications paper with Congyang Li and Rajit Manohar of Yale that presents NeuroScale, a decentralized neuromorphic architecture using local, aperiodic synchronization to preserve determinism without global coordination. The paper compares NeuroScale with the global barrier synchronization of IBM TrueNorth and Intel Loihi.

  7. 2026

    A wiring trade-off in mammal brains

    He is lead author of a 2026 Science Advances study that combines anatomical measurements from 182 mammalian species with experiments on artificial neural networks. The team finds an evolutionary trade-off between the neocortex and limbic structures for smell and memory, and suggests that building this pre-wired architecture into AI systems could make them more efficient in data and energy.

  8. As of October 2026

    Assistant professor at Georgia Tech

    He is an assistant professor in Georgia Tech's School of Computational Science and Engineering and a faculty member of its Institute for Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, and Society. His work in machine learning and theoretical neuroscience aims to understand general principles of neural coding and computation, and their technological applications.

Career

  1. Since 2022Georgia Institute of TechnologyAssistant Professor
  2. IntelSenior Research Scientist
  3. Yale UniversityResearcher

Education

  1. 2014Cornell UniversityPhD

From the biography.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Nabil Imam. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Georgia Institute of Technology. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  3. People shaping AI work at a median of 3 organizations over a career: 3 for university starters and institute and lab starters, versus 2 for company startersIncludes Georgia Institute of Technology. Across 6,853 people shaping AI with a dated work role, we estimate a median of 3 parent organizations over a career (mean 3.6), comparing role groups, starting sectors and starting decades from the 1950s to 2020–2026.
  4. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorateIncludes Georgia Institute of Technology. 84% of people shaping AI with recorded undergraduate and doctoral schools changed institutions for their doctorate. Across 2,116 people with both an undergraduate degree and a doctorate recorded, we trace which undergraduate schools feed which doctoral programs, how often students stay at the same school, and how paths differ by birth-country region.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Nabil Imam yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. ASYNC 2012: A Digital Neurosynaptic Core Using Event-Driven QDI Circuits modha.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. ECE/Cornell Tech Seminar - Nabil Imam, Cornell University - Cornell events.cornell.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Supercomputing 2014 modha.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Nabil Imam sites.google.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Researchers sniff out AI breakthroughs in mammal brains | Cornell Chronicle news.cornell.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Intel's Neuromorphic Nose Learns Scents in Just One Sniff - IEEE Spectrum spectrum.ieee.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Self-organization of cortical areas in the development and evolution of neocortex pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Computer model reveals how cortical areas develop and evolve | Cornell Chronicle news.cornell.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. The Myth of the 'Lizard Brain' and the Real Trade-Off Inside Your Mind | Research research.gatech.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. A deterministic neuromorphic architecture with scalable time synchronization | Nature Communications nature.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  11. Scientists Say the "Lizard Brain" Is a Myth, But the Truth About How Our Brains Evolved May Be Even Stranger - The Debrief thedebrief.org. Checked 21 October 2026.