COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Multiple departments are coming together at Texas A&M University, researching how our physiology can improve computers, becoming the future of technology.
“The other thing about the human brain is that it’s incredibly energy efficient and as we’re headed to a future of about 10 percent of the worldwide energy consumption is going to computers,” said Dr. Sarbajit Banerjee, professor of chemistry, Texas A&M . “We’re going to need much more energy efficient ways because we’re heading into this world of self-driving cars.”
Dr. Banerjee says improving the efficiency of computers impacts manufacturing.
“This is obviously going to be very important to our manufacturing future to technology in the future,” said Dr. Banerjee. “It’s important to work on these technologies which will be at the cutting edge.”
Parker Schofield is in his fifth year of his PhD program at Texas A&M and uses this cutting-edge technology.
“The computers as they are now are actually really efficient at really specific tasks,” said Parker Schofield, Phd student, Texas A&M University. “Things like doing a lot of medial math steps a million times in a row, a computer is great at that.
Schofield says these computers handle complex thought processes.
“To be able to originate an idea is something a computer has immense difficulty with and it requires a lot of different faculties of a human brain to be able to do that,” said Schofield.
Joseph Handy received his PhD from Texas A&M and is also working on this project.
He says one day these computers will be able to mimic the human brain.
“Hopefully this leads to major improvements in things that we use every day like we’ve been talking about, your computer, your laptop, your cellphones, really helping the technology keep pace in terms of efficiency with everything that we want to be able to use it for,” said Joseph Handy, Ph.D, Department of Chemistry, Texas A&M University.
Dr. Banerjee says the product of this research can lead to future job opportunities.
“I think it’s an incredible opportunity for Aggieland to become the center of computing and for us to really see the ecosystem, which is not just us but also companies, and I think remarkable employment opportunities,” said Dr. Banerjee.
Research is soon underway and after four years of research, the team hopes to bridge the gap between computers and the human brain.