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NewsvineThe future of technology has been found. Recent winner of the NIH Pioneer award and bioengineering professor Kwabena Boahen has plans to revolutionize computer technology by simulating the human brain. But he has more than just plans; he has the will and intelligence to make those plans reality.
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Born in the West African country of Ghana, Boahen took his apart most of the things in his house to try and satisfy his innate curiosity. His first computer posed a problem — the need to unravel its puzzles nagged him incessantly, yet he was unwilling to risk taking it apart. So he read and researched until he figured out how it worked. And he ended up “disgusted” by its inelegance.
Boahen continued his exploration as an undergrad at John Hopkins University, where he studied electrical engineering. There he started to learn about the brain’s functions and how it stores information in neuron models. In the brain, Boahen found the efficiency and elegance that he thought all computers lacked. This discovery instilled a passion in Boahen to try and make computers and electronics designed on biological systems.
Boahen went on to study Computation and Neural Systems at CalTech, which brought together students of biology, engineering, math, and neuroscience in order to expose them to a number of different disciplines. Boahen expressed his great faith in this form of interdisciplinary study, noting how “all the interesting stuff [happens] at the interfaces” of the disciplines.
After eight years on the University of Pennsylvania’s bioengineering faculty, this interest in interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary study attracted Boahen to Stanford and to the Clark Center. He lauded the Clark Center for being “so big...so cutting edge” and praised the new bioengineering department specifically. .
At the Clark Center, Boahen has continued his working on designing a computer that operates on the same principles of the human brain. He noted how most modern computers operate on a ‘brute-force approach’ that is not fulfilling all of our technological needs, especially considering current transistor problems. But by accessing the extremely efficient design of the human brain, Boahen hopes to bypass these problems as well as accurately simulate how the brain works. He recently won the very prestigious NIH Pioneer Award for his work, which will provide him and his team with $4 million over five years to continue their research.
Boahen described his life and his work with a calm and precise manner of speaking. He likes to laugh and did so often during his interview with The Daily. His voice quickens with excitement and passion when he starts talking about his research. Talking to him, you feel that no matter how many questions you ask him, you will always only sit on the shore of his ocean of knowledge and curiosity.
Remarkably, Boahen mentioned that he finds memorization difficult, though he is very good at learning how to do things. However, he has never let this inability hamper him. Instead, when he needs to learn something in a foreign discipline, such as when he started study biology, he immerses himself in it. He compared learning that discipline’s vocabulary to “learning a [foreign] language.” This type of study is not “formal,” Boahen said, so much as simply a manner of letting the knowledge and jargon soak into one’s skin.
Toward the end of the interview, Boahen emphasized understanding the nature of problem solving as integral to any form of success or discovery. He said most people “don’t think about fundamental problems,” but rather that they only deal with those problems’ offshoots. Boahen said that “if you think about the fundamental problems and accept them” one can make concrete, significant innovations, not just in one’s work, but also in one’s personal life.
When asked for some final words of wisdom, Boahen offered two somewhat paradoxical responses. He noted that he has spent his life following his ‘own unique path,’ and then delineated how that path has inadvertently echoed paths of those whose came before him, most notably his father’s.
But, more than anything else, Boahen believes, “The passion has to come first.”