Historical
Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)
The
Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) is a medium-sized
university, with some 9000 registered students of whom
one fifth are from outside Belgium. It was created in
the nineteen-sixties through division of the Free
University of Belgium, founded in 1834, into two
separate universities, one being the Flemish-language
VUB. The VUB has two campuses, one close to the heart of
Brussels, where the Applied Science faculty is situated,
the other farther out of the city associated with the
academic hospital. The large Applied Science faculty
comprises a wide range of Departments, spanning across
the fields of computing, telecommunication,
electro-technology and electronics, chemistry,
mechanics, metallurgy, hydrology, architecture and
applied mathematics.
The Department of Electronics and Informatics (ETRO)
ETRO
consists of more than 100 members, including 7 full
professors, 8 part-time professors, 2 adjunct assistant
professor, 8 educational assistants, 2 technicians, 2
secretaries, 1 research coordinator, 4 IMEC researchers, a
network manager, PhD grant holders, and a number of
researchers appointed on a project basis.
The
primary roles of ETRO are:
Education in
electronics and digital signal processing, comprising
circuit design, microelectronic component models and
technology, hardware/software co-development, CAD and
implementation techniques, digital signal processing,
digital image processing and computer vision, pattern
recognition, medical imaging and medical image
processing.
Research and Development
in three major fields spanning micro- and photonelectronic
circuits, devices and technology (LAMI), digital signal
and speech processing (DSSP) and digital image and video
processing (IRIS). Together, these three fields cover a
wide range of generic technologies in Information
Processing which cannot be dealt with separately if
“real-world” applications in “the information society”
are envisaged.
The
Laboratory of Micro- and Photonelectronics
(LAMI),
started from research in the 1980s into CMOS chemical
sensors (ISFETs). It rapidly expanded its research and development role
through optical computing developments into intra- and
inter-chip optical communication, field emission
devices, gas sensors, CO2 laser modulation,
millimeter wave monitoring, and established an advance
group to promote the development of revolutionary
computational techniques.
The Living Systems Group (LIFE)
was initially formed in 1991 to develop optical computer
architectures. This activity developed into the design
of hierarchical less-than-formally rational
computational systems and the investigation of
“lifelike” information processing. Its activities are
currently focused on the transfer of state-of-the-art
theories of neural computation, biological co-evolution,
consciousness and hierarchical complex systems into the
design of both integrated digitally-interfaced lifelike
computation for ULSI “systems-on-a-chip” and
self-organizing global processing networks for the
second decade of the 21st century. It has an
international reputation in the theories of hierarchical
complex systems, computational neuroscience, emergent
processing, natural semiotics and anticipatory
computation.
Current Research Topics
Hierarchical Complex Systems
Theoretical Biology
Intelligent and Sapient Systems
Awareness and Conscious Systems
Genetic and Cancerous Systems
|