Academia
Path to Today
I was born into a Nottinghamshire mining community where education centred on rote and remembering. Not surprisingly, I struggled to understand almost everything! My burning curiosity was never addressed, and nor was it satisfied, as my early teachers shared no passion for understanding - it was about robotic regurgitation devoid of reasoning and knowledge. So, I left high school with no formal qualifications, only to discover I had learned far more at home and in the public library!
An early passion for science and technology led me deep into electronics, hi-fi, remote-controlled aircraft, and ham radio by the age of 11. But an accumulating lack of engineering knowledge drove me into night school at the age of 16, where I was taught by part-time teachers from industry. Their capacity to recognise my level of ignorance and come down to a point where I might understand transformed my thinking and knowledge. Many were inspirational, and it was their patience and dedication that saw me ‘stumble’ into university at the age of 22.
During the next 8 years, I was educated by some of the best lecturers and professors on the planet. Not only did they change my life direction, theyninstilled in me a determination to help and educate others. This saw me teaching at night school, giving talks at schools, colleges and universities, and more recently, graduating to professional educator and professor.
The debt of gratitude I owe my lecturers and professors is immeasurable, and my chosen method of settlement is to emulate them by endowing as much education and understanding as I can...
Perspectives
Throughout my career as a scientist, engineer, manager and entrepreneur, I discovered that there are three key points of deep understanding;
- The first is when you attend lectures and listen to a great professor
- The second is during a ‘design and build’ using that knowledge
- The third is when you try to teach a subject to students
Academic Appointments
- 1972: Part-time Lecturer, People’s College, Nottingham - City & Guilds Telecoms Technician
- 1978: Invited Visiting Professor To CNET Summer School on Theory and Practice of Time Domain Measurements, Lannion University, Brittany, France
- 1980-90: Visiting Industrial Professor To NELP EE Dept, Polytechnic of East London, Barking
- 1981-91: Scientific Collaborator - University Of Liege, Belgium, Dept of Electrical Engineering
- 1985-95: Industrial Visiting Fellow To UCNW @ Bangor School of Electrical Engineering Science
- 1988-99: Visiting Professor at Essex University Department of Electronic Systems
- 1990-94: Robert Gordon’s Inst Of Technology External Examiner for CNAA MSc
- 1991-95: Nottingham Polytechnic External Examiner for BSc Electrical Engineering
- 1991-94: Visiting Prof To Southampton Uni Opto-electronics Research Centre.
- 1991-96: Honorary Prof Of Comms + Electronics & Court Member at Uni of Kent
- 1994-99: Visiting Professor To University College London IT Systems Centre
- 1997-99: Member of the Oxford University Advisory Council on Further Education
- 1999-00: Collier Chair For The Public Understanding of Science & Technology, Bristol
- 2000-02: MIT Media Lab PhD External Examiner
- 2001-04: MIT Media Lab Europe Dublin External Advisor
- 2001-06: Honorary Prof to Robert Gordon University School of Eng Aberdeen
- 2005-08: Visiting Prof of Electronic Engineering Queen Mary University, London
- 2012-15: Visiting Prof to University of Hertfordshire School of Engineering and Tech
- 2012-16: Visiting Lecturer CASS Business School London
- 2016-19: Visiting Professor University of Suffolk
- 2017-20: Visiting Professor to University of Salford
- 2017-20: Visiting Prof to Nottingham Trent University
- 2019-22: Professor of Sentient Systems, University of Suffolk
- 2022-??: Visiting Lecturer to Binus University Jakarta - USA-based PhD Studies
- 2022-??: Visiting Professor to University of Suffolk School of Engineering & Science
- 2023-25: Visiting Professor to Uni of Herts School of Physics, Eng Comp Science
Other Activities
Chairman of London Colleges Telecoms MSc Board 1995-97
Member of Oxford University Advisory Council on Continuing Education, 1997-98
External MSc/Phd Supervisor at Essex, NELP, Kent, RGIT, UCL, Stafford, MIT
External BSc/MSc/PhD Examiner at Essex, Cam, Leeds, Trent, RGIT, MIT, IIT Khargupur
Royal Academy Panel Member for Emerging Technologies Programme R&D
Royal Academy-Funded R&D Project Auditor
Sample Research Realisations - Life
Part of my research explores fundamental questions about the nature of intelligence, life, and sentience. Starting from the observation that everything in the universe, including all living entities, is made of the same stardust, and that all carbon-based life appears to share the same basic RNA/DNA structures, I investigate the nature of "intelligence" and "life."
Key Realisations: Cells are widely considered the smallest living entities and the building blocks of all carbon-based life. Single-celled creatures such as bacteria and algae exhibit intelligent behaviours - they move, sense, communicate, make decisions, and bond to form plants and animals, all exhibiting different degrees of intelligence.
Axiom 1:
- Everything that lives is intelligent to some degree
- Everything that exhibits intelligence is not necessarily alive
- Sentience demands intelligence dominated by interaction with environments
Some intelligent behaviours occur without the obvious properties of memory or data processing, but no intelligent behaviours occur without sensors and actuators.
Axiom 2:
- Intelligent things may exist in a fixed (wholly static) location
- The degree of intelligence (and sentience) accelerates with physical mobility
- Communication and actions are vital components of intelligence and sentience
- Life and intelligence are significantly amplified by the number of bonded cells
- Life and intelligence are significantly amplified by the degree of network/ing/complexity
- Life and intelligence are emergent properties of complexity under specific conditions
Axiom 3:
- All lifeforms are able to sense their environment and interact to some degree
- All lifeforms are able to sense stress and damage to some extent and generally react
Lemma: Equipped with sufficient sensors, actuators, memory, processing, connectivity, and communication, our ‘AI-Robotic’ systems will ultimately become sentient.
Exception: Although the virus can exhibit some life- and intelligence-like properties, it is not classified or considered alive (at present). They are seen as simple packages of nucleic acids that co-exist and act without the ability to reproduce. So, on one level they are brutally simple parasitic entities that hijack both the metabolic and replication mechanisms of their host, whilst on another, they are sufficiently sophisticated to propagate and mutate within and across species for many generations.
Critics might argue that the virus exhibits nothing more than a form of reactive intelligence and often kills their hosts as a result, but so many species kill each other via a similar route!
Discovery: Carbon-based cellular lifeforms reproduce by the hand of nature, but can be made to replicate and exhibit new/designed behaviours by that same hand!
Implications: The most extreme electronic construct being built by man may well be the future IoT/IoE with »1000Bn independent units possessing the ability to connect, process, store information, and make decisions. We should not be surprised at the emergence of new silicon-based intelligences and lifeforms when the IoT accumulates an ample set of attributes, including mobility.