James A. Anderson
Encyclopedia
James A. Anderson (born 1940 in Detroit, Michigan
) is a Professor of Cognitive Science
and Brain Science at Brown University
. His multi-disciplinary background includes expertise in psychology
, biology
, physics
, neuroscience
and computer science
. Anderson received his Ph.D.
from MIT.
Anderson's research on applications of neural networks
have been instrumental to the field of cognitive science as well as numerous business applications. His neural networks have been applied to models of human concept formation, decision making, speech perception, and models of vision.
, which is now owned by ValueClick
. Anderson, along with Andrew Duchon, Jeff Stibel
, Steve Reiss, George A. Miller, Paul Allopenna, John Santini, Carl Dunham, and a number of other Brown University colleagues, created a search engine based on the work of Miller’s WordNet
and Anderson’s neural networks. The science was applied broadly to numerous technology and business applications, most notably Internet search and advertising. Anderson’s neural networks were used to spread across a WordNet knowledgebase and disambiguate ambiguous search terms. As an example, the neural networks would take user input, such as a search keyword (Java), disambiguate the term (Java, in the sense of Coffee) and then expand the search term to create a more complete weighted search function (i.e., Java, coffee, Joe, starbucks).
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...
) is a Professor of Cognitive Science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
and Brain Science at Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
. His multi-disciplinary background includes expertise in psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
, physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
, neuroscience
Neuroscience
Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...
and computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
. Anderson received his Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
from MIT.
Anderson's research on applications of neural networks
Neural Networks
Neural Networks is the official journal of the three oldest societies dedicated to research in neural networks: International Neural Network Society, European Neural Network Society and Japanese Neural Network Society, published by Elsevier...
have been instrumental to the field of cognitive science as well as numerous business applications. His neural networks have been applied to models of human concept formation, decision making, speech perception, and models of vision.
Business
Anderson’s work has spawned numerous companies. Most notably, Anderson was one of the founders of SimpliSimpli
Simpli was an early search engine that offered disambiguation to search terms. A user could enter in a search term that was ambiguous and the search engine would return a list of alternatives .The technology was rooted in brain science and built by academics to model the way in which the mind...
, which is now owned by ValueClick
ValueClick
ValueClick is a Westlake Village, CA-based online advertising company, which provides online advertising campaigns and programs for advertisers and advertising agency customers in the United States and internationally....
. Anderson, along with Andrew Duchon, Jeff Stibel
Jeff Stibel
Jeffrey M. Stibel is an entrepreneur, having started numerous technology and marketing companies. At age 32, he became one of the youngest public company CEOs in America and opened the NASDAQ stock market on June 15, 2007. He is also a brain scientist and published author.- Business :Stibel is...
, Steve Reiss, George A. Miller, Paul Allopenna, John Santini, Carl Dunham, and a number of other Brown University colleagues, created a search engine based on the work of Miller’s WordNet
WordNet
WordNet is a lexical database for the English language. It groups English words into sets of synonyms called synsets, provides short, general definitions, and records the various semantic relations between these synonym sets...
and Anderson’s neural networks. The science was applied broadly to numerous technology and business applications, most notably Internet search and advertising. Anderson’s neural networks were used to spread across a WordNet knowledgebase and disambiguate ambiguous search terms. As an example, the neural networks would take user input, such as a search keyword (Java), disambiguate the term (Java, in the sense of Coffee) and then expand the search term to create a more complete weighted search function (i.e., Java, coffee, Joe, starbucks).
Sample Publications
- Anderson, J. A. (1993), The BSB Model: A simple nonlinear autoassociative neural network, M. Hassoun (Ed.), Associative Neural Memories, New York, NY: Oxford U. Press.
- Anderson, J. A. (1995), An Introduction to Neural Networks, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Anderson, J. A., Spoehr, K. T. and Bennett, D.J. (1994), A study in numerical perversity: Teaching arithmetic to a neural network, Neural Networks for Knowledge Representation and Inference, D.S. Levine and M. Aparicio (Eds.), Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.