Training the MINDS of the future

Southampton is home to the Machine Intelligence for Nano-Electronic Devices and Systems (MINDS) Centre for Doctoral Training, which is one of 16 centres of excellence for research training in Artificial Intelligence funded by UK Research and Innovation.

This £5 million initiative to provide four-year, fully funded PhD opportunities for up to 60 pioneering students, has a unique focus on research that lies at the interface between algorithmic AI techniques and hardware to enable AI.

Professor Tim Norman is Head of the School of Electronics and Computer Science and is the UKRI MINDS CDT Director, he explained: “The area of research between technique and hardware is critically important for future smart infrastructure and industries where AI can add value to both performance and productivity. We welcome students from various backgrounds, ranging from those with industry experience to recent graduates,

as well as related fields including maths and physics – the bringing together of this variety of cohort makes for a melting pot of ideas and knowledge which can result in some groundbreaking research.”

MINDS CDT’s research is centred around four themes:

• Nanoelectronic Technologies for AI –novel hardware technologies to enable AI techniques to operate at a fraction of the power required in current devices

• Embedded AI – techniques to embed AI and machine learning models in low power devices and to manage their security

• Task-Optimised Devices and Systems –how to optimise the interface between tasks performed in hardware and those in software

• Agent-Based Adaptive Systems – novel techniques to decentralise AI such that infrastructures and systems can operate at scale, optimise performance, and work with people effectively