LCN researcher Dr Bipin Rajendran has been awarded an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Open Fellowship to research next-generation AI solutions.
An expert in brain-inspired computing, Dr Rajendran (Department of Engineering at King’s ) has been awarded a £1.5 million EPSRC fellowship for his research aimed at building new algorithms with decision-making capabilities inspired by the human brain. Furthermore, he will develop novel hardware prototypes made from 2-dimensional materials consisting of a few layers of atoms, which will improve the efficiency of the technology.
Dr Bipin Rajendran explains his EPSRC open fellowship ‘Brain-Inspired Nanosystems for Smart and Green AI’
“My fellowship will tackle the goal of creating smarter and greener AI from two fundamental angles. First, it will develop novel algorithms for trustworthy decision-making motivated by the free energy principle; and, second, it will pursue the novel approach of using the undesirable imperfections of nanoscale devices based on 2D materials as a resource for efficiently implementing free energy-based AI algorithms.
To develop this cutting-edge technology, Dr Rajendran will work with world-leading industrial partners, including Intel, Arm, IMEC, Applied Materials, and Intrinsic Semiconductors. He will also collaborate with world-renowned experts from the UK academia – Professors Bashir M. Al-Hashimi (King’s), Karl Friston and Alex Shluger (UCL), Themis Prodromakis (Edinburgh) and Steve Furber and Roman Gorbachev (Manchester).
Dr Rajendran said
“I’m excited about the opportunity to holistically pursue fundamental ideas related to AI hardware and software. The goal is to create a new class of intelligent systems that can make decisions efficiently, without relying on energy-hungry cloud computing resources, while handling uncertainty in data, similar to how our brain processes information and makes decisions. I am looking forward to collaborating with some of the world’s leading experts in these topics and training a new generation of thought leaders through this fellowship.”
EPSRC Open Fellowships are highly competitive funding grants generally awarded to researchers who have won significant funding grants in the past or are leaders in an area of technical development. They enable applicants to focus on projects that further discovery, innovation, instrumentation/technique development or software engineering, or a combination of these, to create a positive change in the research community.
A version of the story first appeared on the King’s College London website.
