Professor Mike Denham

School of Computing, University of Plymouth
Email: mdenham@plym.ac.uk
Web: click here

Mike Denham’s first degree was in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from Birmingham University (1968). After a brief spell in industry, he joined the Control Group in the Electrical Engineering Department at Imperial College, London as a PhD student (1969), and obtained his PhD in mathematical systems theory in 1972. Then followed five years as a postdoc researcher then lecturer at Imperial College, before joining Kingston Polytechnic (now Kingston University). He became a Reader there in 1981 and Professor in 1986. From 1984 to 1988 he served as Head of the School of Computing. He joined Plymouth Polytechnic (now University of Plymouth) as a Research Professor, after a brief time in 1987 as Visiting Professor in EE/CS at University of California Santa Barbara and directing a NATO Advanced Study Institute on Advanced Computing Methods in Control. His interests in adaptive and neural systems developed in 1990/1 and he set up the Neurodynamics Research Group and the Engineering Design Centre (working on applying adaptive search algorithms to design) in 1991. He is currently Professor of Neural and Adaptive Systems and leads the Centre for Neural and Adaptive Systems (CNAS). He is also a founder director and currently Chief Technical Officer of NeuVoice Ltd, a University spin-out company established in November 1999. NeuVoice provides leading-edge noise robust speech recognition technology in mobile wireless communication products and applications, eg voice control of PDA’s, smart mobile phones and in-car info-entertainment systems. The NeuVoice speech recognition technology is strongly based on research in the CNAS into the neural information processing in the human auditory system and uses patented, neurobiologically-inspired algorithms to achieve very high levels of noise robustness comparable with human performance.

Research in the CNAS has two aims: (i) to investigate and develop new theories and computational models of neural information processing, circuits and systems in the brain, in the areas of sensory perception, learning, memory, and action planning and control; and (ii) to generate new computational paradigms and algorithms inspired by such brain processes which will provide the basis for intelligent “neuromorphic” computing and IT systems and applications. Mike Denham’s personal interests include: experimentally valid models of the dynamics of associative long term synaptic potentiation and depression and short term synaptic dynamics in spiking neurons and the use of these models in novel spatio-temporal pattern recognition networks; the creation and retrieval of memories in humans, and how synchronised and oscillatory neural activity might control perception, attention, contextual learning and information integration.

His other professional activities over the last twenty years have included acting as a Specialist Advisor (1984) to the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology (Education and Training for New Technologies), and as a member of a number of Science and Engineering Research Council (now Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) committees, including: Control and Instrumentation Subcommittee (1979-82); Information Engineering Committee (1981-84); Engineering Board Computing Committee (1981-84); Engineering Design Committee (1989-91), Information Technology Advisory Board (1993-94). He was a member of the Computer Science Panel for both the 1996 and 2001 Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) Research Assessment Exercise. In 1999 he was elected to the Governing Board of the International Neural Network Society. In 2001 he was invited to join the UK Computing Research Committee. He reviews grants for the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and was invited in 2001 to sit on the review panel for the NSF programme in Revolutionary Computing. He gave one of the two invited talks at the first meeting of the EPSRC EmerNet Network, the International Workshop on Emergent Neural Computational Architectures Based on Neuroscience, Edinburgh, September 1999; and has given other invited talks at the AAAI National Meeting Workshop on Computation with Neural Systems, and at the special session on "The Global Brain" at the IEEE/INNS/ENNS Joint international Conference on Neural Networks, Como, July 2000.

Teaching Interests
SOFT102 Formal Methods in Software Engineering
ADCS304 Neural Computation
INSY508 Neurocontrol

Departmental Duties
Member of the University Honorary Awards Committee.
Member of the Faculty of Technology Research Planning Committee.
Member of the School of Computing Executive and the School Research Committee.
Research Co-ordinator in the School of Computing, with responsibility for external contacts with funding agencies, etc.
Leader of the Artificial Intelligence Teaching Group
Leader of the Adaptive and Neural Systems Research Area
Leader of the Neurodynamics Research Group
Co-Director of the Plymouth Engineering Design Centre

Research Interests: My main interest is in modelling of biological neural systems, in particular the development of biologically-plausible neural models of sensory-motor control systems in the brain. The objective is both to use such models to help in the understanding of brain function and dysfunction, and to provide inspiration for novel artificial information processing and control systems.
In particular, in the latter case, I am interested in creating novel learning control systems for autonomous agents/robots, and also autonomous agent-based process monitoring and supervisory control systems.