Brilliant teaching and research excellence

Brilliant teaching and research excellence in ‘brain-like’ networks attracts University Medal

AUT’s top award for academic excellence has been awarded to Professor Nikola Kasabov at last week’s AUT Excellence Awards.

Professor Kasabov, Director of AUT’s Knowledge Engineering and Discovery Research Institute (KEDRI), was awarded the University Medal, the university’s pre-eminent academic award.

Vice Chancellor Derek McCormack says since joining AUT in 2002 Professor Kasabov has made an immense contribution to the university, both as a researcher and academic colleague, and as a teacher and mentor for his students.

“Professor Kasabov is an internationally respected researcher who has made significant advances in the field of neural networks. His passion for his research is matched by his enthusiasm for sharing that knowledge with his students and colleagues.”

Past recipients of the University Medal include Professor Marilyn Waring and Professor Welby Ings.

During his time at AUT Professor Kasabov has developed a theory of neurogenetic modelling based on “brain-like” spiking neural networks (SNN).

He describes this theory as being “one step closer to how the brain works”, so instead of processing data as discrete pieces of information, the data is presented as a series of temporal events or ‘spikes’.

This development allows for systems that take into account the time of events and data sequences, and that can identify spatial and temporal patterns.

Using this theory as the foundation, Professor Kasabov and the team at KEDRI have created the NeuCube which is being used for predictive modelling on brain data, seismic data, stroke data and environmental data.

Ultimately the team is looking to harness the NeuCube’s analysis and predictive modelling to predict and prevent disease and environmental disasters.

Currently in Zurich, continuing his research that started under an EU Marie Curie Fellowship and presenting the NeuCube to international colleagues, Professor Kasabov says he is honoured by the award.

Despite his successes to date, Professor Kasabov’s focus is firmly on what comes next. Personalised medicine is one area he believes has huge potential to benefit from advances in neurocomputing.

“I’m an optimist in terms of new developments. I always think that the most important achievements in science generally, and in my own science career, are still ahead.”

Professor Nikola Kasabov
Professor Nikola Kasabov is Director of the Knowledge Engineering and Discovery Research Institute (KEDRI) and an internationally respected researcher in the field of neural networks. He joined AUT University in 2002 and has supervised and supported 22 PhD and numerous Masters students to completion. He has published more than 550 publications that include 15 books, 165 journal papers, 80 book chapters, 28 patents and numerous conference papers. He has held research roles across New Zealand, Europe and Asia and been recognised with a number of awards including the APNNA ‘Outstanding Achievements Award’, the INNS Gabor Award for ‘Outstanding contributions to engineering applications of neural networks’, the EU Marie Curie Fellowship, the Bayer Science Innovation Award, the APNNA Excellent Service Award and the RSNZ Science and Technology Medal.

ENDS

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