Gail Carpenter, Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at Boston, LGB 1966

Gail Carpenter

La Grande Boissière, 1966

Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems, Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at Boston University

United States

Find more about me:

• Neural Networks History interview
• Google Scholar articles
• Website
• Lecture: The ART of Neuromorphic Computing
• Wikipedia

My learning experiences during my five years at Ecolint were the most important, thrilling, and joyful.

My professional life has focused on the interdisciplinary development of brain models and their technological applications. This field, a tiny enterprise in the 1970s, has blossomed into now ubiquitous Artificial Intelligence (AI), as well as scientific fields including Systems Neuroscience. My neural modelling work began with my PhD thesis, “Travelling wave solutions of nerve impulse equations”, at the University of Wisconsin Department of Mathematics. In Boston since 1974, I have taught mathematics at MIT and Northeastern University, and interdisciplinary science, neural modelling, and artificial intelligence at Boston University, where I was a founding member of the Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems (CNS) and founder and director of the CNS Technology Lab. Recent research includes the development of models of how humans and machines can learn from experience in individual contexts, without feedback from a teacher and without degrading reliable knowledge.

I have had wonderful teachers at all my schools, but my learning experiences during my five years at Ecolint were the most important, thrilling, and joyful.

As a woman in a profession that is still overwhelmingly male, I have a special interest in working with, supporting, and mentoring young women and families. I am the only woman ever to have received the IEEE Neural Networks Pioneer Award. Thank you Ecolint: I was in college before anyone suggested to me that girls could not or should not be ourselves in our lives and in our professions.

Thank you Ecolint: I was in college before anyone suggested to me that girls could not or should not be ourselves in our lives and in our professions.

Words of advice to current students: treasure your Ecolint friendships. They will sustain you for a lifetime.