Semir Zeki is Professor of Neuroesthetics at University College London, after having served there previously as Professor of Neurobiology. He pioneered the study of the higher visual areas of the brain, and discovered, among other things, that it consists of many visual areas and that different areas are specialized to process different attributes of the visual scene, such as colour, motion and form. Hence the strategy that the brain uses to build an image of the visual world is that of parallel processing of different attributes of the visual scene, a strategy that leads to functional specialization within the visual brain. He has expanded his work to enquire into the neural correlates of aesthetic and artistic experience. Apart from scientific papers, he is author of 'A Vision of the Brain', 'Inner Vision: an exploration of art and the brain', and 'Splendours and Miseries of the Brain', and co-author with the late French painter Balthus of 'La Quête de l'essentie'l and with Ludovica Lumer of 'La bella e la bestia: arte e neuroscienza'. His artistic work was exhibited in 2011 at the Luigi Pecci Museum of Contemporary Art in Milan: Bianco su bianco: oltre Malevich. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Foreign Member of the American Philosophical Society. He has received the King Faisal International Prize in Biology (2004), the Erasmus Medal (2008) and the Aristotle Medal (2011) for his work on the brain. He founded the Institute for Neuroesthetics in London and California.