When:  Thursday, July 25, 10:30 am US Eastern.

Zoom Detail Below

Background:

Paul Fernhout is passionate about helping people collaborate to make better decisions more quickly using computers. His undergraduate degree in in Cognitive Psychology from Princeton, where his AI research indirectly helped inspire WordNet. He has done PhD graduate studies in Operations Research and Civil Engineering at Princeton including on neural-net-based vision systems for self-driving cars and also sustainable design systems and in Ecology & Evolution at SUNY Stony Brook where his Masters thesis topic was related to modeling global climate change. He spent time as a visiting researcher at CMU Robotics Institute helping with projects including the first major self-driving car (ALVAN) and robotics intended for Three Mile Island (WorkHorse). He also managed the Princeton Robotics and Expert Systems laboratory with a focus on an “expert system” being an interaction between an expert and a system. He has had a varied career since then primarily as a software developer on projects for organizations including IBM Research (Personal Speech Assistant), the Principal Financial Group (TeleApp), Applied Biomathematics (RAMAS/Age Mac), Nabisco (Multi-dimensional Sales Objective Reconciliator), NOFA-NJ (Organic Market Catalog), DARPA/IARPA (GenoaII), the Singapore government (RAHS), Cognitive Edge (Sensemaker, Collector), and, most recently, Pacific Biosciences (SMRT Link). He has done independent FOSS projects with his wife (Cynthia F. Kurtz) related to educational simulations (Garden Simulator), evolutionary design tools (PlantStudio, EvoJazz), information organizers (Pointrel, Twirlip), and Participative Narrative Inquiry (NarraFirma currently being used by the UN Evaluation Group) — and also written about technology and social change (like Post-Scarcity Princeton).

Zoom meeting Link: https://zoom.us/j/7371462221