Prof. de Garis to Teach World's 1st Ph.D. Course on "Brain Building" at USU

I was hired as an associate professor of computer science at Utah State University with the primary function of establishing a Brain Building Center. One essential ingredient of such an enterprise would be to train M.Sc. and Ph.D. students in the techniques of brain building, so the head of the department of computer science at USU asked me to teach a new course (the first of its kind in the world) on how to build artificial brains.

This course took place during the Spring semester of 2002. Its powerpoint lecture notes can be found here.

The course consisted of -

a) Evolvable neural net models
b) Genetic algorithms
c) Hardware design principles
d) Some Hardware Description Language (HDL) lectures
e) Principles of Neuro Science
f) Principles of Ethology (Animal Behavior)

This course will be repeated at PhD level in the Spring semester of 2003. Hopefully by then Ill be teaching how to put 10,000s of evolved neural net circuits together to design artificial brains, and have enough money to do it.