Kwabena Boahen

Kwabena Boahen is a Ghanaian-American professor of bioengineering at Stanford University^[1]. He previously taught at the University of Pennsylvania. During his eight years at Penn, he developed a silicon retina that was able to process images in the same manner as a living retina. He confirmed the results by comparing the electrical signals from his silicon retina to the electrical signals produced by a salamander eye while the two retinas were looking at the same image. Boahen earned his bachelors and masters in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and a PhD from Caltech ^[2].

His research interests include mixed-mode multichip VLSI models of biological sensory and perceptual systems, their epigenetic development, and asynchronous digital communication for reconfigurable connectivity. Dr. Boahen is the recipient of the NSF Career Award, Packard Foundation Fellowship, and the Office of Naval Research's Young Investigator Program Award ^[3].

Publications

• J H Wittig Jr. and K Boahen, "Silicon Neurons that Phase-Lock, IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, May 2006.
• K M Hynna and K Boahen, "Neuronal Ion-Channel Dynamics in Silicon", IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, May 2006.
• B Wen and K Boahen, "A 360-Channel Speech Preprocessor that Emulates the Cochlear Amplifier", IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference, February 2006.
• J V Arthur and K Boahen, "Learning in Silicon: Timing is Everything", Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 17, B Sholkopf and Y Weiss Eds., MIT Press, 2006.
• K Boahen, "Neuromorphic Microchips", Scientific American, vol 292, no 5, pp 56-63, May 2005.
• T Y W Choi, P Merolla, J Arthur, K Boahen and B E Shi, "Neuromorphic Implementation of Orientation Hypercolumns", IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I. vol 52, no 6, pp 1049-1060, June 2005.
• K A Zaghloul, K Boahen and J B Demb, "Contrast Adaptation in Subthreshold and Spike Responses of Mammalian Y-Type Retinal Ganglion Cells", Journal of Neuroscience, vol 25, no 4, pp 860-868, January 2005.
• P Merolla and K Boahen, "A Recurrent Model of Orientation Maps with Simple and Complex Cells", Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 16, S Thrun, L Saul, and B Sholkopf Eds., MIT Press, pp 995-1002, 2004.
• K Boahen, "A Burst-Mode Word-Serial Address-Event Link", IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I, vol 51, no 7, pp 1269-1300, July 2004.
• K A Zaghloul and K Boahen, "Optic Nerve Signals in a Neuromorphic Chip", IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, vol 51 no 4, pp 657-675, April 2004.
• B Taba and K Boahen, "Topographic Map Formation by Silicon Growth Cones", Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 15, S Becker, S Thrun, and K Obermayer, Eds, MIT Press, pp. 1163-1170, 2003.
• K A Boahen, "Point-to-Point Connectivity Between Neuromorphic Chips using Address-Events", IEEE Transactions on Circuits & Systems II, vol 47 no 5, pp 416-434, May 2000.