Ajay Subramanian

Staff Research Scientist, Atlas
Boston Dynamics
Waltham, MA

I am a Staff Research Scientist at Boston Dynamics, working on dexterous manipulation for the Atlas humanoid robot. Previously, I completed my PhD in Cognition & Perception at New York University, advised by Prof. Denis G. Pelli.

Publications

• Reward design agent for reinforcement learning 2026
  Lee, H. , Subramanian, A. , Abbamatteo, B. , Veerabadran, V. , Matias, P. , Ridgeway, K. , Kamra, N Under review
• A narrow spatial-frequency channel along the ventral stream supports object recognition 2026
  Subramanian, A. , Tünçok, E. , Kurzawski, J. , Majaj, N. J. , Pelli, D. G. , Winawer, J bioRxiv
• Human learning of complex novel tasks as theory-based modeling, exploration, and planning 2026
  Tsividis, P. , Loula, J. , Burga, J. , Rodriguez, J. P. , Arnaud, S. , Foss, N. , Campero, A. , Subramanian, A. , Pouncy, T. , Gershman, S. , Tenenbaum, J. B Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A
• Benchmarking the speed–accuracy tradeoff in object recognition by humans and neural networks 2025
  Subramanian, A. , Price, S. , Kumbhar, O. , Sizikova, E. , Majaj, N. J. , Pelli, D. G Journal of Vision, 25(1), 4-4
• Revealing spatial-frequency channels in an ensemble encoding model of human fMRI 2024
  Özçelik, F. , Subramanian, A. , Majaj, N. J. , Pelli, D. G NeurIPS Workshop on Unifying Representations in Neural Models (UniReps)
• Spatial-frequency channels, shape bias, and adversarial robustness 2023
  Subramanian, A. , Sizikova, E. , Majaj, N. J. , Pelli, D. G Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS). [Oral presentation]
• Comparing models of neural representation based on their metric tensors 2023
  Zhou, J. , Chun, C. , Subramanian, A. , Simoncelli, E. P NeurIPS Workshop on Unifying Representations in Neural Models (UniReps)
• Reinforcement learning and its connections with neuroscience and psychology 2022
  Subramanian, A. , Chitlangia, S. , Baths, V Neural Networks, 145, 271-287
• mlGeNN: accelerating SNN inference using GPU-enabled neural networks 2022
  Turner, J. P. , Knight, J. C. , Subramanian, A. , Nowotny, T Neuromorphic Computing and Engineering, 2(2), 024002