Igor Aleksander (born 26 January 1937) is an

emeritus professor ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". In some c ...

of Neural Systems Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

. He worked in

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

and

neural networks A neural network is a group of interconnected units called neurons that send signals to one another. Neurons can be either Cell (biology), biological cells or signal pathways. While individual neurons are simple, many of them together in a netwo ...

and designed the world's first neural pattern recognition system in the 1980s.

Life and work

Aleksander was educated in

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

and graduated from the

University of the Witwatersrand The University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (), commonly known as Wits University or Wits, is a multi-campus Public university, public research university situated in the northern areas of central Johannesburg, South Africa. The universit ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

, arriving in the UK in the late 1950s, intending to become a research student under Colin Cherry. Instead he found work with

Standard Telephones and Cables Standard Telephones and Cables Ltd (later STC public limited company, plc) was a British manufacturer of telephone, telegraph, radio, telecommunications, and related equipment. During its history, STC invented and developed several groundbreakin ...

, later joining Queen Mary College where he gained a PhD, subsequently becoming a lecturer there in 1961. He moved to the

University of Kent The University of Kent (formerly the University of Kent at Canterbury, abbreviated as UKC) is a Collegiate university, collegiate public university, public research university based in Kent, United Kingdom. The university was granted its roya ...

in 1968 as a reader in Electronics and then to

Brunel University Brunel University of London (BUL) is a public research university located in the Uxbridge area of London, England. It is named after Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a Victorian engineer and pioneer of the Industrial Revolution. It became a university ...

as professor in 1974. In 1984 he became professor at

as professor of the Management of Information Technology. He was Head of Electrical Engineering and Gabor Professor of Neural Systems Engineering at Imperial College from 1988 to his retirement in 2002. He was elected Fellow of the

Royal Academy of Engineering The Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) is the United Kingdom's national academy of engineering. The Academy was founded in June 1976 as the Fellowship of Engineering with support from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who became the first senio ...

(1988), and he served as Pro-rector of External Relations at Imperial College (1997). In 2005 he presented the Bernard Price Memorial Lecture. His work centred on the modelling capability of

artificial neural network In machine learning, a neural network (also artificial neural network or neural net, abbreviated ANN or NN) is a computational model inspired by the structure and functions of biological neural networks. A neural network consists of connected ...

s. He devised neuromodels of the

visual system The visual system is the physiological basis of visual perception (the ability to perception, detect and process light). The system detects, phototransduction, transduces and interprets information concerning light within the visible range to ...

in primates, visuo-verbal system in humans, the effect of anaesthetics on

awareness In philosophy and psychology, awareness is the perception or knowledge of something. The concept is often synonymous with consciousness. However, one can be aware of something without being explicitly conscious of it, such as in the case of bli ...

, and artificial consciousness. He inspired the engineering design of one of the first stand alone neural pattern recognition systems, the WISARD (anonym for Wilkie Stonham Aleksander's Recognition Device) which was named after the co-inventors Bruce Wilkie, John Stonham and Igor Aleksander. This Brunel University prototype WISARD was commercially developed and marketed by Computer Recognition Systems, Wokingham, under the trade name of ’CRS WISARD’ in 1984. After this, the further developments of this system do not appear to have been documented. A popular link for WISARD is that of “the wisard pattern recognition machine” at the Winton Gallery, British Science Museum. Aleksander received an honorary degree in Computer Engineering from

University of Palermo The University of Palermo () is a public university, public research university in Palermo, Italy. It was founded in 1806, and is currently organized in 12 Faculties. History The University of Palermo was officially founded in 1806, although it ...

in July 2011.

Selected publications

;Books * 2005, ''The World in My Mind, My Mind In The World: Key Mechanisms of Consciousness in Humans, Animals and Machines'' published by Imprint Academic, . * 2000, ''How to Build a Mind'', London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson * 1996, ''Impossible Minds: My neurons, My Consciousness'' published by Imperial College Press . * 1975, I.Aleksander, F. Keith Hanna, ''Automata Theory: An Engineering Approach'' New York: Crane Russak, London: Edward Arnold. * 1971, ''Microcircuit learning computers'', London: Mills & Boon Monographs and Technical Library ;Articles * 2008
"Machine consciousness"
Scholarpedia 3(2):4162. * 2003, "Axioms and Tests for the Presence of Minimal Consciousness in Agents", in: '' Journal of Consciousness Studies'' * 1997, ''Evolutionary Checkers'' in: ''Nature'', Vol. 402, Dec. 1999, pp. 857–860. * 1997, I. Aleksander, C. Browne, R. Evans, N. Sales, "Conscious and Neural Cognizers: A Review and Some Recent Approaches", in: ''Neural Networks'', Vol. 10, No. 7, pp. 1303–1316. * 1996, N. Sales, R. Evans, I. Aleksander. "Successful naive representation grounding", in: ''Artificial Intelligence Review'', vol. 10, no.1–2, pp. 83–102. * 1994, K. Warwick. "Weightless brains", Review of Neurons and Symbols by Igor Aleksander and Helen Morton, The Times Higher Education Supplement, p. 31, February (1994)

References

External links

Artificial Intelligence
1999-04-29, BBC Radio program In Our Time {{DEFAULTSORT:Aleksander, Igor 1937 births Academics of Imperial College London Academics of the University of Kent Academics of Brunel University London Artificial intelligence researchers Cyberneticists Living people Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering Alumni of Queen Mary University of London Croatian engineers British computer scientists

Life and work

See also

Selected publications

References

External links