Royal Academy of Engineering - Chair in Emerging Technologies: Memristive Technologies for Lifelong Learning Embedded AI Hardware
The Academy’s Chair in Emerging Technologies scheme aims to identify global research visionaries and provide them with long term support to lead on developing emerging technology areas with high potential to deliver economic and social benefit to the UK.
In 2020 Professor Themis Prodromakis was awarded a Chair in Emerging Technologies for his work on Memristive Technologies for Lifelong Learning Embedded AI Hardware, using innovations in nanotechnology to create a new electronic fabric that merges memory with computing power while maintaining extreme power efficiency – like the human brain.
The research, using memristors or memory chips based on transition metal-oxides, will focus on enabling electronic systems to sense, recognise, learn and reason, with the goal of embedding artificial intelligence.
Professor Prodromakis said:
"As evidenced by the government’s recent, £1bn deal with industry for the development of cutting-edge AI within the UK, this programme comes at a very timely moment. “Artificial Intelligence (AI) is destined to transform our society, affecting every aspect of our lives. However, a key bottleneck towards the proliferation of the technology is the lack of efficient hardware that will allow us to embed AI everywhere – well beyond the cloud’s reach.
The specific needs of embedded AI solutions place traditional systems under excessive strain. At the same time, the need for intelligent assistants, connected sensor networks and smart surveillance are pushing the boundaries for more powerful and more efficient hardware for AI that can deal with modern society’s needs for real-time data processing and the ability to adapt continuously (life long learning) under resource-constraint environments."
