Professor Noel Sharkey

Noel Sharkey, BA, PhD, DSc, FIEE, FBCS, CITP, FRIN is professor at the Department Computer Science at the University of Sheffield, and EPSRC Senior Media Fellow. He has held a number of research and teaching positions in the UK (Essex, Exeter, Sheffield) and the USA (Yale, Stanford, Berkeley).
 
Noel has published over a hundred academic articles and books as well as articles and web chats for BBC web pages and regular magazine articles. In addition to editing several journal special issues on modern robotics, he is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Connection Science and an editor of both Robotics and Autonomous Systems and Artificial Intelligence Review.
 
He has moved freely across academic disciplines, lecturing in departments of engineering, philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, artificial intelligence and computer science. He holds a Doctorate in Experimental Psychology, is a chartered electrical engineer, a chartered information engineer, a Fellow of The Royal Institution of Navigation (FRIN), the Institution of Electrical Engineers (FIEE), the British Computer Society (FBCS), a member of both the Experimental Psychology Society and Equity (the actor’s union).
 
Noel appears regularly on TV (over 250 appearances in the last 7 years) and is interviewed regularly on radio, in magazines and newspapers (he has had reports and interviews in all of the broadsheets in the last year). He has been chief judge for every series of Robot Wars throughout the world as well as “techspert” for 4 series of TechnoGames. His main research interests are now in Biologically Inspired Robotics, Cognitive Processes, history of automata (from ancient times to present), Human-Robot interaction and communication, Representations of Emotion, Machine learning.
 
With a Senior Media Fellowship from the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council, Noel is able to spend more time on his passion for engaging the public in debate and discussions about engineering, science and technology (SET) in combination with the arts. In the last year he has given lecture tours of India, China, Egypt with Australia and Singapore soon to follow. He has had large scale museum exhibitions at Magna Science Adventure Centre and Think Tank galleries in Birmingham which have brought integrated SET directly to the public.
 
Noel authored Connectionist Natural Language Processing and Learning from innate behaviors: A Quantitative Evaluation of Neural Network Controllers, edited Advances in Cognitive Science, and coauthored Diversity, Selection and Ensembles of Artificial Neural Nets, A Multi-Net System for the Fault Diagnosis of a Diesel Engine, Grounding Computational Engines, The “test and select” approach to ensemble combination, Life, Mind and Robots. The Ins and Outs of Embodied Cognition, and How to Improve the Reliability of Artificial Neural Networks. Read his full list of publications!
 
Noel also runs robot control and construction competitions for children and young adults (so far from 26 countries). His latest commission is to develop a number of mechanical art installations for the regeneration of the Ancoats region of Manchester with artist/architect Dan Dubowitz.
 
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