Dr. Stan Franklin
Leading and managing the IDA project from its inception, as well as its LIDA (Learning IDA) extension, Stan bears major responsibility for it. His primary research interest is in how minds work. The IDA project that allows the modeling of consciousness and cognition in software agents within a real-world domain is perfect for his needs. Stan typically teaches courses on artificial intelligence and on autonomous agents.
Contact: stan.franklin@memphis.edu

Dr. Steve Strain
Steve is clinically-trained as a physician and currently pursues PhD studies in Biomedical Engineering. His primary area of research is the design and implementation of LIDA-based agent software for the automated diagnosis of medical conditions from electronic medical record data. An additional interest lies in brain rhythms research as it pertains to cognitive function.
Contact: sfstrain at memphis dot edu

Dr. Daqi Dong
Daqi has finished his Masters and PhD in Computer Science with the CCRG at the University of Memphis. His work on LIDA is mainly about the model of action execution, including its estimation and learning. In industry, he was working in the development of COBOL compiler and the software of ATM using C. Currently, he is a software developer for FedEx Services, supporting its business forecasting.
Contact: daqi.dong at gmail dot com

Dr. Pulin Agrawal
Pulin has finished his Masters and PhD in Computer Science at the University of Memphis. He is interested in Artificial General Intelligence and perception using Memory Prediction Framework for intelligence. He worked on implementing Sensory Memory in LIDA Model using Cortical Learning Algorithms. His dissertation presented Sparse Representations as a robust representation tool. He is currently working at nFlux AI as a Research Engineer building deep learning models for visual analytics platform of the company.
Contact: pulinagrawal at gmail dot com
Web: http://bit.ly/pulinagrawal

Dr. Sean Kugele
Sean completed his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Memphis in May 2023. Prior to his return to academia, he was a software developer for over a decade. Most recently, he served as a solution architect and technical principal at FedEx Services. His research interests include embodied simulation-based cognition, hybrid (symbolic/non-symbolic) representational systems, the animat approach to understanding minds, and all things LIDA.
Contact: seankugele at gmail dot com

Dr. Kevin Ryan
Kevin completed his BA at Villanova University, MSc at the University of Edinburgh, and PhD at the University of Memphis in Philosophy, along with a graduate certificate in Cognitive Science. His primary research interests are in philosophy of cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and aesthetics, particularly music. He has worked on implementing a model of self in LIDA and is currently thinking about topics including musical creativity, collective musical performance, improvisation, and how predictive processing accounts of cognition can be directly related to LIDA. Kevin is a Lecturer in the department of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville since Fall 2020.
Contact: kryan30@utk.edu

Zachariah A. Neemeh
Zachariah is a PhD candidate in Philosophy. His research interests are in embodied cognition, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, consciousness, and cognitive architecture. He brings this philosophical background to bear on the development of LIDA, such as introducing the body schema.
Contact: zaneemeh at memphis dot edu
Web: http://neemeh.com

Dr. Christian Kronsted
Christian completed his PhD in Philosophy at the University of Memphis in 2021. He is currently a visiting assistant professor with Oakland University in Detroit, Michigan. His primary research areas are embodied cognition, action theory, and the philosophy of dance. He focuses on interaction, improvisational processes, and the relationship between dance and learning.

Dr. Brian Boutwell
Dr. Brian Boutwell is an Associate Professor in the School of Applied Sciences at The University of Mississippi. He also holds a secondary appointment as Associate Professor in the John D. Bower School of Population Health at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and is a visiting scholar at the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge. He specializes in behavioral genetics, with a general focus on environmental and psychological causes of externalizing and psychopathological outcomes. His more recent work has been centrally rooted in cognitive science, primarily as part of an interest in using the LIDA model to better elucidate various aspects of human cognition, especially as they relate to emotion formation and behavioral outcomes.
Contact: bbboutwe at olemiss dot edu

Current External Members

Dr. Bernard Baars
CCRG projects flesh out Baar's Global Workspace theory through computer simulations. Bernie Baars is a cognitive psychologist with experimental publications focused on language and speech production. His major research focus has been on the cognitive neuroscience of conscious functions. His 1988 book A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness (NY: Cambridge University Press) is still the most detailed scientific examination of this notoriously difficult problem.
Contact: baarsbj@gmail.com

Dr. Ryan J. McCall
Ryan worked on his masters and PhD in Computer Science with the CCRG. His research interests include Perception, Motivation, and a canonical cortical algorithm.
Contact: mccall dot ryan at gmail dot com
Web: http://ryanjmccall.com

Dr. Javier Snaider
Javier is an Electronics Engineer, with an honorary degree from the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, a Computer Science PhD from the University of Memphis, and member of the Cognitive Computing Research Group. He has worked as a computer software consultant, particularly for Java projects. He is a certified Java instructor as well. He currently works at Google. His primary research interests concern cognitive systems and consciousness. Javier's work with LIDA is related to time perception and production, scene representation and the implementation of the LIDA computational framework.
Contact: javiersna at gmail dot com

Dr. Tamas Madl
Tamas has finished his Computer Science PhD thesis at the University of Manchester, and is currently doing postgraduate research at the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence. His main research interests include biologically inspired machine learning, and machine learning inspired models of biological cognition. His work on LIDA mainly includes spatial memory and robotic embodiment, but he has also implemented several cognitive software agents reproducing simple psychological experiments such as the attentional blink.

Dr. Usef Faghihi
Usef is currently an assistant professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières. He has been involved in several facets of the LIDA project such as attentional and causal learning and emotions. His interests are integrating neural networks into cognitive architectures. He is also doing research on artificial emotions, causality, e-learning, intelligent tutoring systems, and user modeling.

Past Members

Dr. Taylor Williams
Taylor is a practicing psychiatrist and a Graduate Certificate in Cognitive Science student at the University of Memphis. Her interests include cognitive neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and mental illness. Her primary focus in the CCRG is robot construction for LIDA agents.
Contact: stwllms2 at memphis dot edu

Dr. Uma Ramamurthy
Uma is currently a faculty member at Baylor College of Medicine/Texas Children's Hospital in
Houston, TX. She completed her doctoral work with Dr Stan Franklin at University of Memphis, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Intelligent Systems. Her research interests include modeling perception, conceptual learning, self and memory systems in cognitive computing agents.
Contact: uma.ramamurthy@bcm.edu
Web: http://www.uramamurthy.com

Dr. Sidney D’Mello
Sidney D'Mello is an associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. He was been actively involved in several facets of the LIDA project since 2002. He is also involved in a number of research areas including affective computing, human like learning in machines, intelligent tutoring systems, and speech and language communication.
Contact: sdmello@msci.memphis.edu

David Friedlander
David Friedlander worked with Dr. Franklin to apply the LIDA model to computer vision. The initial work was targeted towards content based image retrieval for large databases of satellite imagery. He recently left the CCRG to pursue a job in A.I. Mr. Friedlander’s primary research interest is Artificial Intelligence based on models of human cognition.
Contact: dsfriedlander at gmail.com

Nisrine Khayi-Enyinda
Nisrine is currently PhD student in computer science at the University of Memphis. She is working on language learning, in an ALife environment, using the LIDA model. Her research interests include Artificial General Intelligence and the LIDA Software Framework.
Contact: nisrine.aitkhayi at yahoo dot com

Dr. Aregahegn Negatu
Aregahegn has been active member of the IDA project since inception. His research focus and primary responsibility had been the design and/or implementation of IDA's sophisticated and integrated decision making mechanisms: action selection, expectation, automatization, and non-routine problem solving. Besides furthering his work on these mechanisms his future research interest includes modeling of procedural learning for cognitive software agents.
Contact: asnegatu@memphis.edu

Wendell Wallach
Wendell's contribution is focused on how the LIDA architecture might be adapted as a platform for artificial systems capable of making moral decisions. Mr. Wallach is a computer consultant and ethicist affiliated with the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, where he chairs the Ethics and Technology working research group.
Contact: wendell.wallach@yale.edu

Dr. Daniel Dubois
For his Doctoral research (Dr. Franklin acted as external examinator), Daniel has worked with Master students on adding to IDA the required extensions to create CTS, a tutoring agent. With a Bachelor Degree in Theology, Daniel has always shown interests in the human soul, mind, consciousness... and computers. The duo Global Workspace Theory-IDA offered the perfect foundation to explore these. Now, he pursues research and development on various aspects of CTS: Behavior Network, deliberation, genericity, and personnality (including emotional intelligence).
Contact:dani.dubois@gmail.com

Siminder Kaur
Siminder received her MS in Computer Science experimenting with the triggers for the conscious broadcast. Her research interests include cognitive computing, autonomous software agents and the LIDA software framework.
Contact: siminderkaur at gmail dot com

Rodrigo Silva L.
Rodrigo worked on his Doctoral Degree in Computer Science with the CCRG. His research interests include cognitive computing, cybernetics, robotics, and bio-inspired computing.
Contact: rsilva@memphis.edu

Scott Brown
Scott completed the initial implementation of LIDA's Perceptual Associative Memory system. He completed his Master's Degree at the University of Memphis in 2006. He has been working professionally in the software industry since 1998 and is currently the Head of Technology for MicroPlace, an eBay company.
Contact: scott@rsbrown.net

Vivek V Datla
Contact: vvdatla@memphis.edu

Dr. F. G. Patterson, Jr.
F. G. Patterson, Jr., was on a special assignment from the NASA HQ Office of the Chief Engineer.  He worked as a Visiting Scholar and Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the Institute for Intelligent Systems at the FedEx Institute of Technology.  With his background in systems theory, computer science, mathematics, and philosophy, he worked with Stan Franklin on his research in "conscious" software agents.
Contact: csrg.fgp@drfgp2.us

Dr. Lee McCauley
Lee has been an active part of the CMattie project from early in its inception and has transitioned into the IDA project. His role for IDA will be an extension of his work on the emotional mechanism in CMattie. Lee sees emotions as evaluation mechanisms for intelligent agents.
Contact: t-mccauley@memphis.edu
Web: http://www.msci.memphis.edu/~mccaulet/

Dr. Glenn Colman
Glenn has a PhD in AI, but has spent most of his working career as a self employed software engineer. He is currently working on the LIDA project occasionally in Memphis but mostly in New Zealand. His main research interests in LIDA are procedural memory, action selection and consciousness.
Contact: glenncolman@yahoo.co.nz

Ramesh Aitipamula
Contact: raitipml@memphis.edu

Dr. Ashraf Anwar
Ashraf implemented Kanerva’s Sparse Distributed Memory, which serves as the declarative memory module in both CMattie and IDA.
Contact: aanwnr@midsouth.rr.com

Igor Beliaev
Igor is working on his PhD in Computer Science. His research interests include consciousness, neural networks, and Freeman's K-sets.
Contact: bileon@hotmail.com
Web: http://www.msci.memphis.edu/~beliaevi/

Dr. Myles Bogner
Myles had the primary responsibility for the design and implementation of CMattie's consciousness module. His work was the first to determine how coalitions of codelets can be formed in software, the algorithm for choosing the most relevant coalition, and the mechanism in which a broadcast can occur to all the other codelets. Myles' consciousness module later became an integral part of IDA.

Upon completion of his doctorate, Myles has focused on the integration of large disparate systems, business-to-business solutions, systems for military deployment, Java and XML web-based interfaces, peer-to-peer architectures, software quality control, and collaboration environments. He has led the development and deployment of large API-based middleware installations on several occasions. Myles has been on the leading edge in developing solutions for a wide range of organizations, including venture-backed clients, medium and large sized corporations, and government agencies.

Myles has been Asynchrony Solutions' Vice President of Research & Development since 2000 and continues to lead many of the company's most significant programs and initiatives.
Contact: dr.myles.bogner@asolutions.com

Deirdre Bolden
Deirdre has a BBA in MIS. She is currently working on her MSBA (Masters of Science Business Administration) Degree with a concentration in MIS..
Contact: dlbolden@memphis.edu

Vani Vamsi Priya Chitupolu
Contact: vanivamsipriya@memphis.edu

Scott Dodson
Contact: sldodson@fedex.com

Dr. Art Graesser
Art Graesser is an authority in cognitive science, text & discourse processing, computational linguistics, and artificial intelligence. He has developed computer software on question answering, intelligent tutoring, and language processing. Art typically teaches graduate courses in cognitive science and undergraduate courses in research methods in psychology.
Contact: a-graesser@memphis.edu
Web: http://art.graesser.us/

Dr. Arpad Kelemen
Primary among Arpad’s contributions to the IDA project was his design and implementation of IDA’s constraint satisfaction module. He is now an Assistant Professor In the Department of Computer and Information Science at The University of Mississippi
Contact: kelemen@cs.olemiss.edu
Web: http://www.msci.memphis.edu/~kelemena/

Ravikumar Kondadadi
Ravi bore major responsibility for the design and implementation of IDA deliberation module.
Contact: ravi@htinc.com

Sarveshwar Reddy Kuncha
Contact: skuncha@memphis.edu

Dr. Chip Ordman
Chip brings in his expertise in communication scheduling and distributed computing to IDA. His teaching has been in database and distributed processing. His research has been in networks and in problems of communication between processes, including scheduling problems.
Contact: edward@ordman.net

Sita  Pulavarti
Sita is working on her Master's Degree in Computer Science. She has recently joined us  as a research assistant.
Contact: spulavrt@memphis.edu

Ramakrishna
Rama will be graduating with his Master’s Degree in Computer Science in Fall 2003. He has recently joined us as a research assistant for the Procedural Learning group which is part of the CSRG.
Contact: rgundpnn@memphis.edu

Yongmin Shan
Yongmin Shan, a faculty member in computer science at Shanxi University in Shanxi, China, joined our team as a visiting researcher for a year beginning at the end of March 2005 (see below) supported by a Chinese government agency. Yongmin has now returned to Shanxi.
Contact: Shanym@sxu.edu.cn

Alexei Stoliartchouk
Contact: stoliara@msci.memphis.edu 
Web: http://www.msci.memphis.edu/~stoliara/

Dr. Matthew Ventura
Matthew is a PhD student in Cognitive Experimental Psychology whose research interests include natural language processing, knowledge representation and organization, and information retrieval.
Contact: mventura@memphis.edu

Dr. Hongjun Song

Dr. Zhaohua Zhang

Sri Satish Ambati

Irina Makkaveeva

Gurumoorthy Nagasubramanian

Brent Olde

Yun Wan