Konstantinos Michmizos wins the Rutgers Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation Grant for the proposal entitled "Translating Biological to Artificial Intelligence." This is the second Award received within 6 months, in collaboration with leaders in experimental neuroscience: Cheryl Dreyfus, Zhiping Pang (Rutgers Medical School), and Bonnie Firestein (SAS Cell Biology and Neuroscience.)
Prevailing over a century, the neuronal paradigm of studying the brain has left us with limitations in both our understanding of how the brain processes information to achieve biological intelligence (BI) and how such knowledge is translated into artificial intelligence (AI). Overturning our assumptions of how the brain functions and dysfunctions, the recent exploration of astrocytes, the most abundant yet long-neglected non-neuronal brain cells, has ignited a revolution in our fundamental understanding of BI.
The $60,000 1-year Award will enable Konstantinos and his collaborators to achieve their goal, which is to harness and nurture the computational power of non-neuronal cells and unleash it into Brain-morphic Computing. The team is actively working on establishing the experimental and computational foundations to co-study how astrocytes work independently and cooperatively with the neuronal brain.
