Keynote Speakers

Professor Tobias Delbrück – Co-Director of Sensors Group

Tobi Delbruck (IEEE M’99–SM’06–F’13) received a B.Sc. degree in physics and applied math from UC San Diego in 1986 and a Ph.D. degree from Caltech in 1993 in the inaugural class of the Computation and Neural Systems program founded by John Hopfield, as a student of Christof Koch, David van Essen and Carver Mead. Currently he is Associate Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering at ETH Zurich in the Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Switzerland, where he has been since 1998. He directs the Sensors group together with Prof. Shih-Chii Liu. It focuses on neuromorphic event sensors and processing, with recent focus on theory and hardware accelerators for AI.

He co-organizes the Telluride Neuromorphic Engineering workshop and has organized live demonstration sessions at ISCAS, NeurIPS, and AICAS and two Confession Sessions at ISCAS. Delbruck is past Chair of the IEEE CAS Sensory Systems Technical Committee. He worked on electronic imaging at Arithmos, Synaptics, National Semiconductor, and Foveon and has co-founded 3 companies inilabs, insightness, and inivation.

He invented the adaptive photoreceptor circuit. The MOS pseudo resistor used in it is a key part of the most cited JSSC paper of the 2005-2015 decade in the neural-amplifier paper from R. Harrison. He also invented the “bump” circuit and developed open-source ultra wide dynamic range digitally programmable bias current generators used in most mixed-signal neuromorphic chips. His IEEE J. Solid State Circuits paper on the dynamic vision sensor silicon retina event camera was the 4th most cited in the 2005-2015 decade. These event camera developments inspired the Sensors Group's recent work on activity-driven AI hardware accelerators, e.g. NullHop and DeltaRNN, which are among the first to exploit neuromorphic activation sparsity for saving time and energy like spiking neural networks, but in a way that is much more compatible with using DRAM memory for cost-efficient scaling to large deep networks.

Over the past 5 years he has been working towards using these hardware AI circuits for adaptive nonlinear robotic control. His papers have been awarded 13 IEEE awards and in 2013 was named a Fellow of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society for his work on neuromorphic sensors and processing.  He likes to read storybooks, play tennis, and sometimes tries card magic on unwary subjects.

Dr Elisa Donati

Dr Elisa Donati (Member, IEEE) received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees (cum laude) in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy, and the PhD degree in bio-robotics from the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa.

Dr Donati is a Senior Scientist with the Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zürich and ETH Zürich. Her research activities include the interface of neuroscience and neuromorphic engineering.

Dr Donati has authored 22 publications and is interested in understanding how the biological neural circuits carry out the computation and apply them in biomedical applications and neurorobotics. Elisa is investigating how to process biomedical signals to extract features to develop human–robot machines. She is also the Co-Coordinator of the H2020 EU CSA Project NEUROTECH.

Associate Professor Chetan Singh Thakur – Adjunct Researcher

Dr Chetan Singh Thakur joined the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, as an Assistant Professor in 2017. He received his PhD in Neuromorphic Engineering under the supervision of Professor André van Schaik at the MARCS Research Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University, in 2016. Associate Professor Thakur worked as a research fellow at the Johns Hopkins University with Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings and Professor Ernst Niebur for a year before joining IISc as an Assistant Professor.

Associate Professor Thakur has extensive industrial experience. He worked for six years with Texas Instruments Singapore as a senior Integrated Circuit Design Engineer, designing IPs for mobile processors. World leaders have trained him in the field of neuromorphic engineering, and his research expertise lies in neuromorphic computing, mixed-signal VLSI systems, computational neuroscience, probabilistic signal processing, and machine learning. His research interest is to understand the computing principles of the brain and apply those to build novel intelligent VLSI systems.

Associate Professor Thakur has authored 93 publications.

Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings

Professor Ralph Etienne-Cummings is a renowned figure in the field of neuromorphic circuits and systems and their application to mobile robotics, with a three-decade track record of pioneering innovations. His work is centred on creating computers capable of human-like recognition, developing seamless human-body interfacing prosthetics for restoration and overcoming diseases.

Currently he is serving as the Julian S. Smith Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Vice Provost for faculty affairs at Johns Hopkins University, with a secondary appointment in Computer Science. His research focus spans biologically inspired processing, biomorphic robots, neural prosthetics, and surgical technologies. Professor Etienne-Cummings is known for ground-breaking work in large-scale neural computing, pulse-based motion chips, silicon retinas, and modelling of visual attention.

Furthermore, his recent work delves into interfacing electronics with the nervous system, using biological signals to control biomorphic robots, and developing implantable devices for spinal cord injuries, wearable physiological sensors, and medical imaging systems. With over 230 technical articles, a book, 12 book chapters, and 16 patents, he has earned recognition for innovations in silicon models of neuromuscular control and neural prostheses. Professor Etienne-Cummings' distinguished career spans academia and industry, with notable roles such as founding director of the Institute of Neuromorphic Engineering, consultant for various technology firms, and participation in projects like DARPA's Revolutionary Prosthesis.

Professor Etienne-Cummings has received multiple awards, including Fellow of AIMBE (2021) and JHU Discovery Awards (2019, 2018), and has been named a Kavli Fellow in Science by the National Academies of Science. Etienne-Cummings is an esteemed member of various technical committees and editorial boards. He holds a BSc in Physics from Lincoln University (1988) and earned his MSEE (1990) and PhD (1994) in electrical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr Peter Roming

Dr Peter Roming, PhD, PMP
Director, Space Instruments & Payloads Department
Space Systems Division
Southwest Research Institute

Dr Roming has had a key role in numerous missions and instruments. He is currently the co-principal investigator and project manager developing the Spectrograph and Camera for Observations of Rapid Phenomena in the Infrared and Optical (SCORPIO) for the Gemini South Observatory in Cerro Pachón, Chile. He is also project manager for the L’Ralph Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC), which just launched to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids aboard the Lucy observatory, and the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation’s (EMIT’s) Printed Circuit Engineering Interface and Telemetry Box (PITB), which will operate from the International Space Station to better understand the source and radiative effects of airborne dust.

Dr Roming is also a lifetime member of the Golden Key National Honor Society. He received multiple NASA group achievement awards, the AAS High Energy Astrophysics Division Bruno Rossi Prize and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific’s Muhlmann Award as part of the Swift team.

Dr Roming has a doctorate in physics and astronomy, with a second emphasis in mechanical engineering, from Brigham Young University (BYU). He also holds master’s and bachelor’s degrees in physics from BYU. He joined SwRI in 2010.