Folks have anticipated nice issues from Alice Parker, who was raised in a household of distinguished scientists and engineers. And Parker, emerita professor {of electrical} and pc engineering on the University of Southern California has delivered. She helped develop high-level (behavioral) synthesis, an automatic pc design course of that assists with the transformation of a behavioral description of {hardware} right into a mannequin of its logic and reminiscence circuits.
Her father, a chemist, was on the staff that first synthesized vitamin B1 at pharmaceutical firm Merck in New Jersey. In 1941 her uncle Edward Wenk Jr., was appointed the primary science advisor to the U.S. Congress.
Parker is at the moment serving to to develop a man-made mind that may replicate the features of neural mechanisms believed to be vital for studying and reminiscence.
This yr IEEE President-Elect Tom Coughlin interviewed Parker for her IEEE Historical past Heart oral history. It’s now obtainable on the Engineering and Technology History Wiki. This text relies on that interview.
Modeling the mind
Parker’s work is concentrated on 4 areas: biomimetic neuromorphic circuits, biomimetic stereo imaginative and prescient, retinal and cortical neuromorphic analog circuits, and nanotechnology.
Biomimetic neuromorphic circuits mimic the mind’s short-term reminiscence and cognition. Biomimetic stereo imaginative and prescient helps techniques understand objects in three dimensions. Retinal and cortical neuromorphic analog circuits simulate neural networks discovered within the retina and the visible cortex.
Parker is combining these analysis areas via the design of a biomimetic real-time cortex (BioRC), primarily a man-made mind.
In collaboration with Chongwu Zhou, {an electrical} engineering professor at USC in Los Angeles, she created the primary synapse made with carbon-nanotube transistors. Parker and her college students developed the primary analog circuit designs of astrocytes (mind cells) that work together with circuits that mannequin neurons to duplicate the features of neural mechanisms believed to be vital for studying and reminiscence.
“We’re how the mind works biologically, and we’re pushing it down a stage and seeing what we will emulate,” Parker says. “Can we emulate schizophrenia? Can we emulate varied issues which might be organic?” She stated the mission has been “quite a lot of enjoyable.”
BioRC in all probability would be the final massive factor she works on throughout her profession, she says.
STEM: A household affair
Parker’s curiosity in pursuing a STEM profession started earlier than she began elementary faculty in Birmingham, Ala., after her mother and father purchased her a chemistry set. On the time, her father was a professor on the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
She was “barely in a position to learn,” she recollects, so her father described what the mission was so she might do it by herself.
Her mother and father additionally purchased her older brother engineering kits, and Parker watched him full them. Collectively the siblings fastened damaged electronics round the home, corresponding to a tv and an electrical prepare.
As a highschool scholar, she constructed a laboratory in a toilet at dwelling. Parker participated in lots of science gala’s and gained a number of awards for her initiatives. Her science-fair success caught the eye of a trainer who inspired Parker to pursue a level in electrical engineering, and he helped her plot her profession path.
“I used to be all the time within the pc and digital issues,” Parker instructed Coughlin within the interview.
She was awarded a partial scholarship to attend North Carolina State University, in Raleigh. Her father taught physics close by at Durham Technical Community College. Whereas an undergraduate EE scholar there, she received an internship at Southern Services Co., in Birmingham, Ala. The corporate offered engineering providers for 5 energy corporations together with Alabama Power, Florida Power, and Georgia Power.
At Southern she realized use an IBM 360 pc—which she stated was a helpful talent later in her profession.
After graduating with a bachelor’s diploma in 1970, Parker determined to pursue a grasp’s diploma in electrical engineering at Stanford. The college’s brochure persuaded her to use to its graduate program, she says, as a result of it featured Michael A. Arbib, a biomedical engineering professor who studied mind modeling.
Parker thought that line of analysis was “very cool,” she says, and he or she utilized to Stanford so she might work with Arbib. However by the point she began there, he had left to affix the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
Whereas at Stanford, Parker says, she fell in love with California. However after receiving her grasp’s diploma in 1971, she returned to North Carolina. She accomplished her thesis at N.C. State below the steerage of James W. Gault.
Parker earned her doctorate in 1975 in electrical engineering from N.C. State however stated she regretted leaving California.
She joined Carnegie Mellon that very same yr as an assistant professor. There she met her husband. They spent 5 years in Pittsburgh, then the couple determined to maneuver to a hotter locale after a horrible winter storm.
“It was minus 27 °C. The glass in the home’s storm door shattered, and the automobile wouldn’t begin,” she recollects. She knew then, she says, that she was able to return to the Golden State.
She joined USC in 1980 and has labored there since. All through her 40 years on the college, she has held a number of management positions together with division director for pc engineering, dean of graduate research, and vice provost for analysis.
She has acquired quite a few awards for her educating, together with the 2008 South Central Students Service Award from the South Central Students (now Thrive Scholars), a 2006 USC Viterbi School of Engineering teaching award, and a 1990 U.S. National Science Foundation Faculty Award for Women Scientists and Engineers.
“USC has been a fantastic expertise,” Parker says. “I can’t think about being anyplace else.”
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