Can machine learning help us understand how the human brain develops even before birth? On October 8, Prof. Andras Jakab from the University of Zurich and University Children’s Hospital Zurich will visit the AGH Faculty of Computer Science to show how machine-learning methods and magnetic resonance imaging can be used to study brain development in fetuses, newborns, and children.
Human brain development is an extraordinarily dynamic process. Studying it is particularly challenging during the prenatal period and early childhood: brain anatomy changes rapidly, children may move during MRI scans, and available clinical data are often limited and heterogeneous. This presents challenges not only for medicine and neuroscience, but also for computer science.
Prof. Jakab and his team address these challenges by developing machine-learning methods for extracting information from MRI scans of fetuses, newborns, and children. Their research focuses on solutions that can account for the changing anatomy of the developing brain, handle heterogeneous data, and make use of large international datasets.
During his talk, “Machine-learning for understanding human brain development and its diseases,” Prof. Jakab will explain how machine learning supports medical image analysis and helps develop methods that generalise across different populations and imaging settings. He will also discuss how computational approaches can uncover patterns of brain development and investigate their relationships with disease and subsequent clinical outcomes.
Andras Jakab is a Professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Zurich and a Research Group Leader at the Center for MR Research at the University Children’s Hospital Zurich – Eleonore Foundation. His research focuses on normal and abnormal human brain development and on the use of medical imaging, image analysis, and machine learning to better understand these processes. His group works on topics including fetal and infant MRI analysis, brain development mapping, connectomics, and applications of generative AI in medical data analysis.
The seminar will take place on October 8, 2026, at 12:00 in room 2.36 at the AGH Faculty of Computer Science, 21 Kawiory St. The seminar will be held in English.
Participation is free of charge and open to everyone interested – including staff, PhD students, students, and participants from outside AGH.
Online streaming:
Join the seminar on Webex
We warmly invite you to join us!