The 21st century is defined by increasingly intelligent machines and a drive to use them for augmenting human capability. On one side, developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) are more and more inspired by nature’s efficiency. On the other hand, advances in medical interventions are increasingly driven by ever more intelligent electronics. Innovation in engineering underpins both on a fundamental level.

In his inaugural lecture, the 10th Regius Chair of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh will chart his career in this exciting domain, presenting some of his team’s efforts over the past 20 years in: emerging semiconductor devices, low-power AI chips and bio-interfacing systems.

This will be presented as a series of maps describing the journey from the time of his postgraduate research on defect engineering to current work where single nanoscale devices are used for bringing bio-inspired concepts to life. The lecture will cover the challenges and opportunities encountered along the way, concluding with an overview of efforts he is coordinating at an international scale, aiming to transform the interaction between AI and Engineering over the next 20 years.

Professor Prodromakis is the Director of the Centre for Electronics Frontiers and in 2022 he became the 10th Regius Chair of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. His work focuses on developing metal-oxide Resistive Random-Access Memory technologies and related applications and leads an interdisciplinary team comprising 50 researchers with expertise across materials process development to electron devices and circuits and systems for embedded applications.

Professor Prodromakis holds an RAEng Chair in Emerging Technologies and is Adjunct Professor at UTS Australia and Honorary Fellow at Imperial College London. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the British Computer Society, the IET and the Institute of Physics. He served as the Director of the Lloyds Register Foundation International Consortium for Nanotechnology and Co-Director of the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Machine Intelligence for Nano- Electronic Devices and Systems (MINDS).

In 2015, Professor Prodromakis established ArC Instruments Ltd that delivers high-performance testing infrastructure for automating characterisation of novel nanodevices in over 26 countries. His contributions in memristive technologies and applications have brought this emerging semiconductor technology one step closer to the electronics industry for which he was recognised as a 2021 Blavatnik Award UK Honoree in Physical Sciences and Engineering.