Statement of Non-Endorsement Regarding the Scheduled Doctoral Defense of Ms. Thirza Dado at Radboud University — Istanbul, 29 Oct 2025

www.linkedin.com/posts/umguec...

This apparent act of information suppression — intentional or otherwise — ensured that no public record of the proceedings exists. The absence of such a record speaks for itself, leaving the public to draw its own conclusions about the validity of the issues raised in my statement.

This raises an unavoidable question: why would a public defense proceed in private, even after the institution had been alerted to serious procedural and governance concerns?

UPDATE (30 October 2025):

The public livestream for this public defense was not activated. The event therefore took place in private, shielding it from the public scrutiny it is meant to invite.

🙏 Huge thanks to the fantastic team: @florianmahner.bsky.social, @lukasmut.bsky.social & @martinhebart.bsky.social — and all supporters at @mpicbs.bsky.social & @dondersinst.bsky.social!

#CognitiveNeuroscience #DeepLearning #NeuroAI

🔗 Full text: doi.org/10.1038/s422...
🛠️ Code + data: github.com/florianmahne...

🥼 What we did
• Treated DNNs as humans in 20M odd-one-out trials
• Learned shared embeddings with interpretable dimensions (color, taxa, texture…)

🔍 Key finding
• Humans weight semantic cues first
• DNNs weight visual cues first

➡️ Why it matters
• Reveals a fundamental gap in human–AI alignment

🚀 Hope this brings us one step closer to restoring meaningful vision to those who need it most.

#BrainComputerInterfaces #ComputableAwards #DigitalInnovation #NeuroAI #Neuroprosthetics #Neurotech #eLife

✨ Fun fact: Ours was the only award where both the jury and the public agreed! Such rare consensus made the recognition feel even more special.

🙏 Immensely grateful for the inspiring collaboration, and proud to see our work recognized on such a prestigious stage.

🧠 Together, we introduced a biologically plausible phosphene simulation for the differentiable optimization of visual cortical prostheses. You can read more in our eLife paper: doi.org/10.7554/eLif...

👉 This award recognizes our groundbreaking work carried out by Maureen van der Grinten and Jaap de Ruyter van Steveninck, in close collaboration with NIN and UMH—especially Antonio Lozano—under the supervision of Yağmur Güçlütürk and myself.