Plenary Talks

Plenary Talk 1 (Sep. 3)

Professor Kunihiko Fukushima
Fuzzy Logic Systems Institute, Fukuoka, Japan
URL: http://personalpage.flsi.or.jp/fukushima/index-e.html

Recent Advances in the Deep CNN Neocognitron

[Biography]
Kunihiko Fukushima received a B.Eng. degree in electronics in 1958 and a PhD degree in electrical engineering in 1966 from Kyoto University, Japan. He was a professor at Osaka University from 1989 to 1999, at the University of Electro-Communications from 1999 to 2001, at Tokyo University of Technology from 2001 to 2006; and a visiting professor at Kansai University from 2006 to 2010. Prior to his Professorship, he was a Senior Research Scientist at the NHK Broadcasting Science Research Laboratories. He is now a Senior Research Scientist at Fuzzy Logic Systems Institute (part-time position), and usually works at his home in Tokyo.

He received the Achievement Award, Distinguished Achievement and Contributions Award, and Excellent Paper Awards from IEICE; the Neural Networks Pioneer Award from IEEE; APNNA Outstanding Achievement Award; Excellent Paper Award, and Academic Award from JNNS; INNS Helmholtz Award; Pioneer Award from ELM2017; and so on. He was the founding President of JNNS (the Japanese Neural Network Society) and was a founding member on the Board of Governors of INNS (the International Neural Network Society). He is a former President of APNNA (the Asia-Pacific Neural Network Assembly).

He is one of the pioneers in the field of neural networks and has been engaged in modeling neural networks of the brain since 1965. His special interests lie in modeling neural networks of the higher brain functions, especially the mechanism of the visual system. In 1979, he invented "neocognitron", which is a deep CNN and acquires the ability to recognize visual patterns through learning. The extension of the neocognitron is still continuing.

Plenary Talk 2 (Sep. 4)

Professor Soumitro Banerjee
Indian Institute of Science Education & Research, Kolkata, India
URL: http://www.iiserkol.ac.in/people/faculty/dps/soumitro

Nonlinear Phenomena in Power Electronics

[Biography]
Dr. Soumitro Banerjee (born 1960) did his B.E. from the Bengal Engineering College (Calcutta University) in 1981, M.Tech. from IIT Delhi in 1983, and Ph.D. from the same Institute in 1987. He was in the faculty of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, since 1986, and has moved to the Indian Institute of Science Education & Research, Kolkata, in 2009.

Dr. Banerjee's areas of interest are the nonlinear dynamics of power electronic circuits and systems, and bifurcation theory for nonsmooth systems. He has published three books: "Nonlinear Phenomena in Power Electronics" (Ed: Banerjee and Verghese, IEEE Press, 2001), "Dynamics for Engineers" (Wiley, London, 2005), and "Wind Electrical Systems" (Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2005). Dr. Banerjee served as Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits & Systems II (2003-05), and as Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Circuits & Systems I (2006-2007). He is a recipient of the S. S. Bhatnagar Prize (2003), and was recognized as a "Highly Cited Author" by Thomson Reuters from 2004 to 2014. He is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Academy of Engineering, the Indian National Science Academy, The World Academy of Sciences, and the IEEE.