| Anil Kumar Seth | |
| Birth Place: | England |
| Fields: | Neuroscience |
| Workplaces: | University of Sussex |
| Education: | King's College, Cambridge (BA) University of Sussex (MSc, PhD) |
| Thesis Title: | On the Relations between Behaviour, Mechanism, and Environment: Explorations in Artificial Evolution |
| Thesis Url: | https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.340800 |
| Thesis Year: | 2000 |
| Doctoral Advisors: | Hilary Buxton Phil Husbands |
Anil Kumar Seth (born 11 June 1972) is a British neuroscientist and professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. A proponent of materialist explanations of consciousness,[1] he is currently amongst the most cited scholars on the topics of neuroscience and cognitive science globally.[2]
Seth holds an BA (promoted to an MA per tradition) in natural science from the King's College, Cambridge and a PhD in computer science from the University of Sussex. Seth has published over 100 scientific papers and book chapters, and is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness. He is a regular contributor to the New Scientist, The Guardian, and BBC, and writes the blog NeuroBanter.
He is related to the Indian novelist and poet Vikram Seth.
Seth was born in England. His father, Bhola Seth, obtained a BSc from Allahabad University in 1945, before migrating from India to the United Kingdom to study engineering at Cardiff. Bhola Seth subsequently obtained a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Sheffield. His mother, Ann Delaney, came from Yorkshire. Seth's family was based in rural Oxfordshire. His father was a research scientist at the Esso Research Centre in Abingdon, and won the veterans' world doubles title in badminton in 1976.[3]
Seth went to school at King Alfred's Academy in Wantage. He has degrees in Natural Sciences (BA/MA, Cambridge, 1994), Knowledge-Based Systems (M.Sc., Sussex, 1996) and Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (D.Phil./Ph.D., Sussex, 2001). He was a Postdoctoral and Associate Fellow at The Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, California (2001–2006).
Since 2010 Seth is co-director (with Prof. Hugo Critchley) of the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science,[4] and editor-in-chief of Neuroscience of Consciousness. He was conference chair of the 16th meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness and continuing member 'at large'[5] and is on the steering group and advisory board of the Human Mind Project.[6] He was president of the Psychology Section of the British Science Association in 2017.[7] [8]
Seth has published over 100 scientific papers and book chapters, and is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Neuroscience of Consciousness.[9] He is a regular contributor to the New Scientist, The Guardian,[10] and BBC,[11] and writes the blog NeuroBanter.[12] He also consulted for the popular science book, Eye Benders, which won the 2014 Royal Society Young People's Book Prize.[13] An introductory essay on consciousness has been published on Aeon – The Real Problem – a 2016 Editor's Pick. Seth was included in the 2019 Highly Cited Researchers List that was published by Clarivate Analytics.[14]
Seth appeared in the 2018 Netflix documentary The Most Unknown[20] on scientific research directed by Ian Cheney.