Head of group: Giacomo Indiveri

Location of group: Zurich, Switzerland

Number of faculty: 1

Number of researchers/postdocs: 2

Number of doctoral students: 7

Number of masters students: 3

The NCS group was established in early 2009 at the Institute of Neuroinformatics to study and develop computational models, hybrid analog/digital VLSI circuits, and multi-chip event-based systems for implementing Neuromorphic Cognitive Systems.

What is a neuromorphic cognitive system and what is neuromorphic cognition? We don't have a comprehensive answer to these questions yet. But are work is aimed at bridging the gap from simple reactive neuromorphic sensory-motor systems to ones that are cognitive in quality: e.g. neuromorphic architectures that can reason about the actions to take, in response to combinations of external stimuli, internal states, and behavioral objectives.

We focus on analog/digital VLSI architectures that use the physics of silicon to reproduce the biophysics of biological neural systems, and multi-chip systems that communicate using asynchronous event-based signals (spikes).

Our main contributions to neuromorphic VLSI technology consist of novel low-power silicon neuron circuits, dynamic silicon synapses, hybrid analog/digital spike-based learning mechanisms, soft winner-take-all networks, and asynchronous digital communication circuits and systems.

Representative publications:

G. Indiveri, E. Chicca, and R. Douglas, Artificial cognitive systems: From VLSI networks of spiking neurons to neuromorphic cognition, Cognitive Computation, 1(2), pp. 119-127, March 2009.

S. Mitra, and G. Indiveri, Spike-based synaptic plasticity and classification on VLSI, The Neuromorphic Engineer, April 2009. DOI: 10.2417:1200904.1636.

G. Indiveri, Neuromorphic VLSI Models of Selective Attention: From Single Chip Vision Sensors to Multi-chip Systems, Sensors 8, pp. 5, September 2008.

G. Indiveri, S.-C. Liu, T. Delbruck, and R. Douglas, The New Encyclopedia of Neuroscience, chapter on Neuromorphic systems, pp. 521-528, Larry Squire et al. (Eds.), Elsevier, 2008.

Web address for further information:

http://ncs.ethz.ch/ncs

Contact for those interested in joining the group: