University of Leicester Mathematician accorded title of Pioneer at International Conference

Professor Alexander Gorban, a mathematician from our University, has been accorded the title of Pioneer of Russian Neuroinformatics.

Director of the Mathematical Modelling Centre and Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University, he has been recognised for his extraordinary contribution into theory and applications of artificial neural networks.

The award was made at the XIX International Conference "Neuroinformatics-2017" held in Moscow. Professor Gorban was an organiser of the first conference in this series (1998) and delivers keynote talks at the event almost every year.

The conference programme included plenary session, basic and poster sessions, workshops on the state-of-the-art of neuroinformatics and round-table discussions.

Professor Gorban said: “I am grateful to the Russian Neural Network Society and the "Neuroinformatics-2017" Conference for this award. 1980s and 1990s was a turbulent time in Russian history. Despite that, Neuroinformatics was developed intensively, in parallel with Western countries. It was very surprising how similar ideas were published absolutely simultaneously and independently in Russia and abroad.

“I did not work alone, and I am very grateful to the team. I consider this award as recognitions of the team work. Now, we are distributed across the world: Victor Okhonin is in Canada, Andrei Zinovyev works in Paris (scientific coordinator of system biology at Institut Curie), I with Evgeny Mirkes work in Leicester, Dmitry Rossiev (who developed dozens of medical applications of neural networks) is pro-rector of Krasnoyarsk Medical Academy (Eastern Siberia).

“Research “should go on”: in Leicester, together with Ivan Tyukin and industrial partners (like ARM) we are developing new technologies for correction of artificial intelligence systems under support of InnovateUK. This is a new story, for the future. Just follow our latest publications like https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2017.07.014 or arXiv e-prints.”