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Misha Mahowald, ca; 1990. Photo credit: R. Douglas
Carver Mead, ca. 1990. Photo credit: T. Delbruck
Dr. Misha Mahowald, for whom the prize is jointly named, was a highly talented, influential, and charismatic pioneer of neuromorphic engineering whose life ended prematurely from mental illness. Her 1992 Caltech PhD thesis with Carver Mead developed the first integrated silicon retina, the address-event representation (AER) interface, and a beautiful demonstration of collective computation in stereo vision. It was awarded the prestigious Clauser prize. Her PhD work appeared on the covers of Scientific American and Nature during her PhD (see below). Her research took place at Caltech and Oxford, and she was a founding member of the Institute of Neuroinformatics at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. Her novel designs of brain-inspired CMOS VLSI circuits for vision and computation have continued to influence a generation of engineers.
Caltech Prof. Emeritus Carver Mead, for whom the prize is jointly named, is the most influential early proponent of using organizing principles of the nervous system in analog and mixed-signal VLSI chip designs. His Physics of Computation lab at Caltech established many fundamental circuits and architectural principles still used today. His 1989 MIT Press book "Analog VLSI and Neural Systems" (free link) and 1990 Proceedings of the IEEE position paper "Neuromorphic Electronic Systems" (free link) established the field of neuromorphic electronic engineering.
Click cover images below for articles and books by Mahowald and Mead
Mahowald PhD
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