Michael A. Arbib


Michael A. Arbib is the Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science, as well as a Professor of Biological Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Southern California. As both a theoretical neuroscientist and a computer scientist, Arbib argues that by deducing the brain's operating principles from a computational standpoint we can both learn more about how brains function and also gain tools for building learning machines. Arbib is a prolific author and has written or edited over 30 books and many scientific research articles. His work has been extremely influential in shaping the field of computational neuroscience.
Arbib was educated in New Zealand and at The Scots College in Sydney, Australia, Captain of Debating, Royal Empire Society Public Speaking Competition Champion, editor, The Scotsman, and a Prefect in the same year as leading Australians Ken Catchpole & Tony Coote. In 1957, he was Co-Dux of the College, and winner of the Barker Prize for coming first in the State in Mathematics. In 1960 he took a BSc at the University of Sydney, with the University Medal in Pure Mathematics.
Arbib received his PhD in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1963. He was advised by Norbert Wiener, the founder of cybernetics, and Henry P. McKean, Jr. As a student, he also worked with Warren McCulloch, the co-inventor of the artificial neural network and finite-state machine. After a brief postdoc with Rudolf Kalman, Arbib spent five years as an assistant professor at Stanford, before becoming the founding chairman of the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1970. He remained in the Department until 1986, when he joined the University of Southern California.
With Richard Didday, he developed one of the first winner-take-all neural networks in 1970. More recently, with Giacomo Rizzolatti, the leader of research team that discovered mirror neurons, he proposed an evolutionary link between mirror neurons, imitation, and the evolution of language.

Selected bibliography

Books