Dharmendra Modha
Encyclopedia
Dharmendra S. Modha is a manager and lead researcher of the Cognitive Computing group at IBM Almaden Research Center. He is known for his pioneering works in Artificial Intelligence and Mind Simulation. In November 2009, Modha announced at a supercomputing conference that his team had written a program that simulated a cat brain. He is the recipient of multiple honors, including the Gordon Bell Prize
, given each year to recognize outstanding achievement in high-performance computing
applications.
, India and a Ph. D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from UCSD
. He is a UC San Diego graduate. He received his Ph.D. at the Jacobs School of Engineering in 1995 and is now manager of Cognitive Computing at IBM's Almaden Research Center and a Master Inventor
. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and a member of AAAS, ACM, and SfN.
proposal that brought together IBM (Almaden, Watson, Zurich, India), Stanford University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cornell University, Columbia University, and University of California at Merced to embark upon the ambitious quest of cognitive computing to engineer intelligent business machines by reverse-engineering the computational function of the brain and delivering it in a small, energy efficient chip. Over the last two decades, he has founded two start-up companies, been issued 26 U.S. patents and has authored over 40 publications in international journals and conferences.
Gordon Bell Prize
The Gordon Bell Prizes are a set of awards awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery in conjunction with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers each year at the Supercomputing Conference to recognize outstanding achievement in high-performance computing applications...
, given each year to recognize outstanding achievement in high-performance computing
High-performance computing
High-performance computing uses supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Today, computer systems approaching the teraflops-region are counted as HPC-computers.-Overview:...
applications.
Personal life
Modha holds a B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT MumbaiIndian Institute of Technology Bombay
The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay , popularly known as IIT Bombay or IITB, is a public research university located in Powai, Mumbai...
, India and a Ph. D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from UCSD
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...
. He is a UC San Diego graduate. He received his Ph.D. at the Jacobs School of Engineering in 1995 and is now manager of Cognitive Computing at IBM's Almaden Research Center and a Master Inventor
IBM Master Inventor
An IBM Master Inventor is an individual selected by IBM. The qualification and appointment to Master Inventor is governed by the value to IBM of an inventor's contribution to the patent portfolio, and through defensive publication...
. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and a member of AAAS, ACM, and SfN.
Achievements
Modha is manager of the Cognitive Computing group at IBM's Almaden Research Center. He chaired IBM’s 2006 Almaden Institute on Cognitive Computing, co-chaired Cognitive Computing 2007 at Berkeley, CA, and was a speaker at the Decade of the Mind Symposium in May 2007. He is the Principal Investigator for DARPA SyNAPSESyNAPSE
SyNAPSE is a DARPA program that aims to develop electronic neuromorphic machine technology that scales to biological levels. More simply stated, it is an attempt to build a new kind of computer with similar form, function, and architecture to the mammalian brain...
proposal that brought together IBM (Almaden, Watson, Zurich, India), Stanford University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Cornell University, Columbia University, and University of California at Merced to embark upon the ambitious quest of cognitive computing to engineer intelligent business machines by reverse-engineering the computational function of the brain and delivering it in a small, energy efficient chip. Over the last two decades, he has founded two start-up companies, been issued 26 U.S. patents and has authored over 40 publications in international journals and conferences.
Prizes
- He performed cortical simulations at scale of cat cerebral cortex (1 billion neurons, 10 trillion synapses) only 100x slower than real-time on a 147,456 processor BlueGene/P supercomputer. This work received ACM’s Gordon Bell Prize.
- At IBM, he has won the Pat Goldberg Memorial Best Paper award, an Outstanding Innovation Award, an Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, and Communication Systems Best Paper Award.
- He is currently an IBM Master Inventor.