The Engineer and the Brain - World expert to give interactive lecture in Kuala Lumpur
-The British Council Malaysia web site
For Immediate Release
10 November 1999
World expert in neural networks, Professor Igor Aleksander, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, will give a fully interactive lecture entitled 'The Engineer and the Brain' to over 500 senior school and MARA students. The lecture will take place at the Renaissance Hotel in Kuala Lumpur between 10.00 and 11.30am on Saturday 13 November.
Professor Aleksander will give an interactive lecture mainly based on a computer-projected set of demonstrations using members of the audience to drive the computer. Throughout the lecture he will be using a neural system that those with connections to the Internet at home or at school will be able to download (free of charge) and experiment with.
The brain is the most complex machine on earth and Professor Aleksander will tell the story of the way in which engineers are helping to unravel its mysteries by building artificial models of the way it functions.
"We will start by looking at a brain cell. How does it work? We shall see that it could be made as an electronic component. But the brain has 100,000,000,000 such cells, so if we wanted to make an electronic model of these, that would be some wiring task," said Professor Aleksander.
He will also show how it is possible to simulate brain cells on a computer. The audience will see a live simulation of how groups of these cells can learn to recognise patterns. It is this learning ability that distinguishes the brain from a computer. The brain learns while a computer needs to be programmed. This will lead Professor Aleksander on to introduce the idea of a virtual machine.
A learning model of a part of the brain (known as a neural network) can be produced as a virtual machine on a conventional programmed (i.e. non-learning) computer. But once this is done, the virtual part of brain behaves in a way that is similar to a real brain which allows experiments to be undertaken as if it were a real brain. Members of the audience will be asked to come and help out with this part of the lecture.
"Then we shall get really ambitious, Professor Aleksander reveals, and imagine that someone has asked us to build a brain for an android that is to go on a space mission to Mars. How will it behave when something totally unexpected happens? We shall see...But they key thing that the brain does is make us conscious. We shall have a discussion about that and what it means. Then we shall speculate about what a conscious machine might be like - will it be more useful than a current computer or could it turn nasty?"
The lecture is in association with an Imperial College Alumni Weekend which is centred on a Convocation Ceremony on the afternoon of Saturday 13 November. The lecture has been organised in collaboration with the British Council in Malaysia.
For more information contact:
Susie Renshaw
Press Office
Imperial College
Tel: 020 7594 6701
Email: s.renshaw@imperial.ac.uk
Notes to editors:
1. Igor Aleksander is Professor of Neural Systems Engineering and was Head of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College for 10 years. Professor Aleksanders particular research areas are artificial intelligence, neural networks and IT management. His recent work lies in the area of artificial visual awareness which arises from a collaboration with the California Institute of Technology. He has published over 200 papers in these fields and 12 books. In 1988 he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering. As a result of his commitment to the public understanding of science he makes frequent TV and radio appearances. Igor Aleksander's web page: http://wwk">http://www.ee.ic.ac.uk/research/neural/aleksander.html
2. Imperial College ofScience, Technology and Medicine is an independent constituent college of the University of London. Founded in 1907, the College teaches a full range of science, engineering, medical and management disciplines at the highest level. Imperial College has the largest annual turnover (£310 million in 1997-98), the largest research income (£210 million in 1997-98) and the largest working estate of any university institution in the UK. It has 8,823 full time students, 30 per cent of whom are postgraduate and 35 per cent non-British nationalities. In the last academic year there were 285 undergraduate and 49 postgraduate students from Malaysia. The Imperial College web site is at: http://www.ic.ac.uk
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