Hitchcock LECTURE SERIES

Intelligence and the Brain: Recent Advances in Understanding How the Brain Works

Jeff Hawkins, Co-Founder, Numenta, Inc.

October 02, 2012 — 4:10 PM
International House Auditorium, 2299 Piedmont Avenue, Berkeley

About Jeff Hawkins

Jeff Hawkins has a multifaceted career as an inventor, engineer, neuroscientist, author and entrepreneur. In On Intelligence (2005), he describes his life as “animated by two passions”: mobile computing, and neuroscience. As the founder of Palm and Handspring, Hawkins was at the forefront of mobile computing and developed landmark products like the Palm Pilot and Treo smart phone. His lifelong interest in neuroscience led him to UC Berkeley as a graduate student in integrative biology, and to found the Redwood Neuroscience Institute, aimed at understanding how the neocortex processes information. In 2005, Hawkins gifted the RNI to UC Berkeley, where it is now the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience.

His latest company, Numenta, brings his two passions together. At Numenta, Hawkins is developing new computer technologies modeled on the workings of the neocortex. This approach, “hierarchical temporal memory,” allows machines to extract patterns from complex data streams and predict what is likely to occur. The company’s latest product is Grok: a cloud-based engine that makes predictions from streaming data. Hawkins hopes that Numenta will play a catalytic role in the emerging field of machine intelligence.

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