Curriculum Vitae (PDF)  - Short Bio (HTML) (PDF)

(My apologies: My publications site, vitae and bio have not been kept properly up to date for the past 1.5 years or so. I promise to correct this soon!)

Competition is an inescapable occurrence in the animate and even in the inanimate universe. To give our minds the flexibility to transfer and to operate in different substrates bestows upon our species the most important competitive advantage. (2009)

I am presently participating in the ambitious and fascinating efforts at the nanotechnology company Halcyon Molecular. I am a co-founder of the Neural Engineering Corporation of Massachusetts. Prior to this, I have been the director of the Department of Neuroengineering at Tecnalia, third largest private research organization in Europe, and was a research Prof. at the Center for Memory and Brain of Boston University. My research objective is whole brain emulation, creating the large-scale high-resolution representations and emulations of activity in neuronal circuitry that are needed in patient-specific neuroprostheses. The Department of Neuroengineering of the Fatronik-Tecnalia Foundation was focused on research in neuro-adaptive control, with robotics applications, and research in neural recording, interfaces and feedback.

At carboncopies (carboncopies.org), we support practical approaches toward what we descriptively term “advanced substrate-independent minds” (ASIM), i.e. transferring mind functions from the biological substrate to another substrate on which those functions can be performed. Carboncopies initially takes a technology agnostic stance. Carboncopies' main tasks are to clarify the fundamentals of ASIM and to maintain roadmapping activities towards the ASIM objective. Carboncopies organizes workshops and conferences where interested parties can exchange ideas, network with others, and keep updated on the latest developments in the field. We also gather up-to-date literature and news relevant to the ASIM community.

My professional background includes computational neuroscience, psychology, information theory, electrical engineering and physics. Presently:

• I am devoting my efforts to the success of Halcyon Molecular, in its quest to accomplish ultra-high throughput low-cost DNA sequencing and the crucial benefits that this capability will catalyze.
  
• I am organizing neural engineering efforts to obtain and replicate function and structure information that resides in the neural substrate for use in neuroprostheses and neural interfaces.
• The Neural Engineering Corporation and partners are creating a Virtual Brain Laboratory (VBL) based on NETMORPH (netmorph.org), the computational framework for the simulated morphological development of neuronal circuitry. The VBL will give neuroscientists, neuroengineers and clinicians large-scale high-resolution quantitative tools analogous to the computational tools that have become essential in fields such as genomics, chemistry or the aero-space industry.

These efforts bridge scales and will help determine how significant functions are encoded robustly in neural ensembles, and how those functions can nevertheless depend in specific ways on the detailed biophysics of particular component physiology.