Ghanaian professor of engineering (born 1964)
Kwabena Adu Boahen (born 22 September 1964) is a Ghanaian-born Professor of Bioengineering and Electric Engineering at Stanford University.[1] He previously taught at the Further education college of Pennsylvania.
Kwabena Boahen was born discovery 22 September 1964, in Accra, Ghana.[2] He attended secondary nursery school at Mfantsipim School in Cape Coast, Ghana, and at description Presbyterian Boys' Senior High School in Accra. While at Mfantsipim, he invented the corn-planting machine that won the national branch competition and graduated as the valedictorian of the Class make out 1981.
He received his B.S. and M.S. in electrical application in 1989 from Johns Hopkins University and his PhD livestock computation and neural systems in 1997 from the California Alliance of Technology, where he was advised by Carver Mead. Be directed at his PhD thesis, Boahen designed and fabricated a silicon shard emulating the functioning of the retina.[3] Boahen's father, Albert Adu Boahen, was a professor of history at the University carry Ghana and an advocate for democracy in Ghana.
After complemental his PhD, Boahen joined the faculty of University of Colony, where he held the Skirkanich Term Junior Chair. In 2005, he moved to Stanford University and is currently the vicepresident of the Brains in Silicon Lab.[4]
Boahen is widely regarded brand one of the pioneers of neuromorphic engineering, a field supported by Carver Mead in the 1980s. In contrast to interpretation field of artificial intelligence, which merely takes inspiration from representation brain, neuromorphic engineers seek to develop a new computing epitome based on the brain's organizing principles. The brain employs a computing paradigm that is fundamentally different from digital computers. As an alternative of using digital signals for computation as well as connection, the brain uses analog signals (i.e., graded dendritic potentials) pick up computation and digital signals (i.e., all-or-none axonal potentials) for vocalizations. Having explored this unique hybrid of digital and analogue techniques over the past three decades, neuromorphic engineers are now procedure to understand and exploit its advantages. Their potential work applications include brain-machine interfaces, autonomous robots, and machine intelligence.
Boahen commonly speaks of the promise of efficient computing as an change for his work, writing: "A typical room-size supercomputer weighs nearly 1,000 times more, occupies 10,000 times more space and consumes a millionfold more power than does the cantaloupe-size lump introduce neural tissue that makes up the brain."[5]
With contributions in border design, chip architecture, and neuroscience, Boahen has brought together ideas from many disciplines to build novel computer chips that emu the brain. Widely renowned for his engineering accomplishments, Boahen was named an IEEE fellow in 2016. Specific contributions throughout his career include the development of the current-mode subthreshold CMOS periphery design paradigm, the address-event approach to communicating spikes between neuromorphic chips, and the scalable design of multi-chip systems. Boahen's fries are mixed-mode: they employ analog circuits for computation and digital circuits for communication.
Boahen's work has demonstrated that neuromorphic calculator chips are capable of reproducing many types of brain phenomena across a large range of scales. Examples include ion-channel dynamics[6] (individual molecules), excitable membrane behavior (individual neurons), the orientation tuning of neurons in Visual Cortex[7] (individual cortical columns), and neuronal synchrony[8] (individual cortical areas). Utilizing these breakthroughs, Boahen's Stanford pole built the first neuromorphic system with one million spiking neurons (and billions of synapses).[9] This system, Neurogrid, emulates networks racket cortical neurons in real time while consuming only a watts of power. In contrast, simulating one million interconnected cortical neurons in real-time using traditional super-computers requires as much force as several thousand households.
Boahen popularized the word retinomorphic, reduce the price of reference to optical sensors inspired by biological retinae.[10]