University of Turin - Department of Computer Science

University al Azhar Indonesia
www.uai.ac.id

Agent based model for coastal settlement transitions

-Use of models, including agent-based models, in understanding the formation of surface archaeological deposits in arid Australia
-Individual-based modelling of resource use on marginal islands in Polynesian prehistory
-Individual-based modelling of the influence of serial voyaging events on body proportions in Remote Oceania
-Discrete event simulation of early horticultural production in New Zealand

My core research interest is to understand how humans and other living creature perceive and behave; respond and act upon their environment and how this dynamic interplay shapes us into who we are. In recognition of the broad scope of this question I am a strong believer in the need for inter- and multi-disciplinary approaches and have worked at research groups in a wide range of departments and institutions, including university departments of Physics as well as Psychology, a bio-medical research lab, a robotics research laboratory and most recently the RIKEN Brain Science Institute. Though my work has primarily taken the form of computational neuroscience I have also performed psychophysical experiments with healthy human subjects, been involved in neural imaging experiments and contributed towards the development of a humanoid robot.

Based on the philosophy of ‘understanding through creating’ I believe that bio-mimetic and biologically inspired computational and robotic engineering can teach us not only how to build more flexible and robust tools but also how actual living creatures deal with their environment. I am therefore a strong believer in the fertile information exchange between scientific as well as engineering research disciplines.