Ralph Etienne-Cummings, the Julian S. Smith Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the Whiting School of Engineering, is a co-producer of Brains and Machines, a podcast devoted to neuromorphic and brain-inspired technology. Produced in conjunction with EE Times Current and hosted by Sunny Bains, an associate teaching professor at University College London, Etienne-Cummings, and Giulia D’Angelo, a postdoctoral fellow at Czech Technical University, the podcast features in-depth interviews and discussions on topics ranging from spiking neural networks and biomimetic robots to emerging hardware, showing how brain-inspired principles drive more efficient, adaptive computing.
Etienne-Cummings’s role in the project grows out of a long-running collaboration with Bains that started when they worked on a paper together in the 1990s and has since evolved into organizing conferences and partnered on ECE initiatives, including the news wall in Barton Hall. They are currently writing a book on neuromorphic engineering. They say that the podcast serves as both a forum and a resource: a way to gather insights for the book, spotlight leading contributors across the field, and host informed debate on where the technology is headed.
Adding to this success, EE Times Current, the network that carries Brains and Machines, was recently named one of the Top 10 Electronics Podcasts of the Year by Million Podcasts.
The latest episode, on insect-inspired robotics, features Barbara Webb, a professor of biorobotics at the University of Edinburgh. Next up is an interview with Brad Aimone, a distinguished member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories, which will be released soon.