Karl J. Friston

Karl Friston
Born
Karl John Friston

(1959-07-12) 12 July 1959
York, England
NationalityBritish
EducationGonville and Caius College, Cambridge (BA, 1980)
Known forStatistical parametric mapping, voxel-based morphometry, dynamic causal modelling, free energy principle, active inference
SpouseAnn Elisabeth Leonard
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsNeuroscience, Mathematical and theoretical biology, Variational Bayesian methods
InstitutionsUniversity College London
Websitewww.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl

Karl John Friston FRS FMedSci FRSB (born 12 July 1959) is a British neuroscientist and theoretician at University College London. He is an authority on brain imaging and theoretical neuroscience, especially the use of physics-inspired statistical methods to model neuroimaging data and other random dynamical systems. Friston is a key architect of the free energy principle and active inference. In imaging neuroscience he is best known for statistical parametric mapping and dynamic causal modelling. Friston also acts as a scientific advisor to numerous groups in industry.

Friston is one of the most highly cited living scientists and in 2016 was ranked No. 1 by Semantic Scholar in the list of top 10 most influential neuroscientists.