Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 01:04:23 GMT
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Barak Pearlmutter Technical Interests
Technical Interests
My primary technical interest is in systems that adapt: how to
analyze them, how to under stand them, how to build them. Because
the most flexible and competent adaptive systems available to us
are nervous systems, I'm interested in artificial neural networks
and computational neuroscience. I'm most fascinated by the
construction of novel architectures and algorithms that enable us
to understand and attack previously unassailable problems, and to
understand previously mysterious aspects of nervous system
function.
To be specific, right now I have a few research topics simmering
on the front burner:
- Blind source separation: I'm working on better and more
modular and incremental methods to solve the cocktail party
problem, both in the classic (linear square mixing matrix) and in
the more difficult (fewer microphones than sources) cases.
- Reinforcement learning in a weakly adversarial
domain: In the real world, one's actions modify the world,
typically to the detriment of similar actions in the future. I'd
like to understand how to perform as well as possible, under the
circumstances.
- Neural information and coding: How is information
represented and transformed in the nervous system? How are
these representations acquired and adapted?
- Egomotion: The process of estimating a camera's
motion efficiently, reliably, robustly, and using beautiful
mathematics.
- Neural networks: Learning algorithms,
generalization, relations to other techniques, handling time and
domain drift in a principled fashion, unsupervised learning,
information theory.
A secondary interest of mine is in programming systems, especially
advanced programming language design and implementation. There are
a number of deficiencies in current advanced programming languages
that hinder their application to scientific computation, and I
would enjoy participating in an effort to remove these stumbling
blocks.
Barak Pearlmutter
bap@cs.unm.edu