Two New PGI Directors at Neuromorphic Computing Subinstitutes

23 August 2021

Two international scientists have joined Jülich’s neuromorphic computing subinstitutes: in July, Prof. John Paul Strachan and Prof. Emre Neftci started as new directors at the Peter Grünberg Institute. Strachan heads the new Neuromorphic Compute Nodes (PGI-14) subinstitute, Neftci the Neuromorphic Software Eco System (PGI-15) subinstitute.

Neuromorphic hardware: Prof. John Paul Strachan

Prof. Strachan aims to develop neuromorphic hardware systems at Jülich’s PGI-14 and continue to develop them in cooperation with other subinstitutes at Forschungszentrum Jülich.

The physicist and computer engineer, who was born in Costa Rica and grew up mostly in the USA, most recently conducted research into innovative hardware similar to neural networks at Hewlett Packard Labs in Silicon Valley.

The research group he headed there coined the term “memristive elements” – a group of materials that is of interest in fields such as neuromorphic computer systems.

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www.fz-juelich.de/pgi/PGI-14

Prof. Neftci develops special algorithms for neuromorphic computer systems at PGI-15.

The physicist, who was born in New Jersey (USA) and grew up in Geneva (Switzerland), most recently conducted research at the renowned Institute of Neuroinformatics at ETH Zurich (Switzerland) and the University of California in Irvine (USA).

Neftci aims to find out, for example, how millions of artificial neurons can be efficiently connected to each other in a network.

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What is neuromorphic computing?

Neuromorphic computers perform calculations based on the model of the human brain. To this end, a huge number of artificial synapses that can process and store data simultaneously are connected to each other. Such a network architecture reflects the self-learning and self-organizing nature of the human brain.