Professor David Powers
Full Academic Status
College of Science and Engineering
Prof. David M W Powers is Professor of Computer and Cognitive Science and oversees a wide range of projects in artificial intelligence, robotics and assistive technology. His specific research framework takes Language, Logic and Learning as the cornerstones for a broad Cognitive Science perspective on Artificial Intelligence and its practical applications. He also sees science fiction as an excellent way of exploring the ethical and social implications of AI and related technologies, and encourages this exploration as just as legitimate a part of AI as implementation or philosophical debate - it is important for scientist to relate what they are doing in a way everyone can understand, and particularly in a way that encourages young people's interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
Blogs like "the Science and the Fiction", and high quality forums like "stackexchange", are increasingly important mechanisms for educating people. Here Prof. Powers seeks to promote a sound understanding of AI technology, as well as our understanding of concepts like consciousness, sentience and trust.
Prof. Powers has been a pioneer in the areas of Parallel Logic Programming, Embodied Conversational Agents, Natural Language Learning, Unsupervised Learning and Evaluation of Learning. He was Founding President of ACL SIGNLL and initiated SIGNLL's CoNLL conference. His CV includes positions at Telecom Paris, University of Tilburg, University of Kaiserslautern, Macquarie University, as well as work with industry, and commercialization of research through several start up companies. Prof. Powers is a Visiting Professor at Beijing University of Technology, and serves on several program committees and editorial boards, being Editor-in-Chief of the Springer book series Cognitive Science and Technology.
Prof. Powers is SA Research Director, ARC ITRH Digital Enhanced Living Hub.
2001 Dip.TA (ATAA), Securities Institute Australia (Technical Analysis)
1989 PhD, University of New South Wales (Computational Psycholinguistics)
1984 ThC, Moore Theological College
1982 Certificate in Linguistics, SIL
1979 B.Sc.(Hons), University of Sydney (Computer Science/Pure Maths)
2018-22 ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hub for Digital Enhanced Living
2017-20 ARC Linkage Grant: "Economic complexity as a driver of innovation and smart specialisation"
2013-17 NecTAR: "Alveo Human Communication Science Virtual Laboratory" http://alveo.edu.au/
2011-14 ARC DP, "Enhanced Brain and Muscle Signal Separation verified by electrical scalp recording from paralysed awake humans"
2011-13 Beijing NSF Grant, "Facial Expression extraction using FACS and D-S Evidence
2011-13 Strathmore Who's Who Professional of the Year in Higher Education - Language Technology
2010-12 Chinese NSF Grant, "Multimodal Patterns of Student Learning Behaviour for virtual English pedagogy"
2010-11 ARC LIEF, "BIGASC - an audiovisual corpus of Australian English" http://austalk.edu.au/
2009-12 ARC Discovery Grant, "Heterodensity neuroimaging techniques for spatiotemporal identification and localization"
2008 Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, Flinders University
2008 Executive Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Flinders University
2006-12 ARC/NHMRC Thinking Systems Grant, "From Talking Heads to Thinking Heads" http://thinkinghead.edu.au/
2006-07 Flinders SciEng Program Grant $112K, "Advanced Information Analysis, Techniques and Tools"
2002- DSTO, Cognitive Neuroscience and Military Training, etc. (a series increasing from $10K to over $100Kpa)
2001-04 Commercialization Grants for YourAmigo ($1.5M (1xCOMET, 2x$START, etc. + $25M commercial investment)
2000 ARC Small Grant, Robot Baby Mark II $10K
1999 Special Award for the Advancement of the Turing Test, Loebner Prize in Artificial Intelligence, Bronze Medal
1999-2000 Flinders SciEng, Speech Correction $22K
1998 Flinders SciEng, Auditory Process $5K
1998 DSTO Contract, Clause Analysis $10K
1997-2000 ARC Discovery Grant, "Machine Learning of Japanese/Chinese"
1995 Equal Opportunity Commendation for assisting students with disabilities, Flinders University
1985 ATERB Grant "Macquarie Automated Reasoning Physical Implementation & Application"
1984 ARGS Grant for Comparmentalized Concurrent Connection Graphs (CCCong) for Parallel Logic Programming
Advisory Board, YourAmigo Pty Ltd
International Advisory Board, ACL SIGNLL and CoNLL (Founding President)
Editorial Board, Brain Informatics and Cognitive Science and Technology (EIC)
Program Coordinator, Bachelor of Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence)
- Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, Psycholinguistics, Logic Programming and Robotics
- Human Computer Interface, Human Machine Interface and Human Factors
- Neural Networks, Machine Learning, Evaluation and Optimization
- Programming, Algorithms and Problem Solving, Sorting and Searching
- Computer Assisted Education, Computer Assisted Language Learning
- Embodied Conversational Agents, Intelligent Robots and Autonomous Vehicles
- AI in Health, Medicine and Sport
- EEG, Brain Imaging, Brain Computer Interface, Unconscious Computer Interface, Biomedical Prosthetics
- Parallel Computation, Computer Hardware and Programming Languages
- Persuasive Technologies and Motivational Interviewing
- Pedagogical Educational Teaching Agents - Teaching Head
- Educational Games and Educational Fiction, Stratetic Games and Optimal/Automated Gameplay
- Teaching Social, Linguistic and Numeric skills to those with disabilities or disadvantaged or non-English backgrounds
- Academic writing, reviewing and critiquing
Membership at various levels of ACL, ACM, IEEE and other professional organizations, including engagement on executive committees, conference committees.
Founding President of ACL SIGART. Former member of ACS SA Branch Executive and National Technical Advisory Board.
Active contributor to social media in relation to several areas of specific expertise and interest.
- Artificial intelligence
- Cognitive science
- Computers
- Disability
- Engineering - Biomedical
- Engineering - Computer Systems
- Linguistics
- Logic
- Psychology
- Signal processing
- Artificial Intelligence
- Biomedical Analysis
- Brain Computer Interfaces
- Cognitive Science
- Computational Linguistics
- Educational, Learning and Assistive Technologies
- Image Processing
- Intelligent Rooms and Robotics
- Logic Programming and Automated Reasoning
- Machine Learning
- Natural Language
- Parallelism
- Robotic and Biomedical Engineering
- Search and Visualisation
- Speech Recognition
- World Modelling
Current/Available Student Projects (Honours, Masters & PhD with Cog/Comp Sci, Elec/Mech/Biomed/Soft Eng subprojects)
1/6 Matrix/Array Functional/Inductive/Abductive logic (MAFIAlog) programming language
- The aim is to combine the speed of C, the convenience of Matlab, the power of Neural Nets/Learning and the declarative logic and reasoning power of Prolog.
2/6 Design and Evaluation of Heterodensity EEG Electrodes
- The aim is to provide cheap flexible wireless EEG electrodes for Research and BCI with higher resolution where needed.
3/6 Grounded Natural Language Learning, Speech Understanding and Embodied Conversational Agents for Realworld and Internet
- The aim is to learn grammatical and ontological relations and use them in real world applications (cf. Clevertar/YourAmigo/YourAnswer)
4/6 Intelligent Buildings (Mechanical/Solar/Thermal, Biomedical/Accessibility, Electronics/Computer/Software)
- The aim is to for a building to be ecologically and ergonomically efficient, and accessible for everyone as they get older and develop disabilities.
5/6 Unconscious Computer Interface (UCI)
- The aim is to move Brain Computer Interface from unnatural "actions", that need to be trained, to natural "intentions" that are learned.
6/6 Audiovisual Brainmuscle Computer (ABC)
- Wheelchair - aim is to combine Robotic, Computer Vision, Intelligent Building and BCI/UCI technologies for natural high level control of a wheelchair.
- Desktop - aim is to combine Speech/Language, Ontology/Vision & UCI technologies for computer email/web/office functions.
Sturt Rd, Bedford Park
South Australia 5042
South Australia | Northern Territory
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