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Topic 

Multiscale Neuromorphic Control – Methods and Practice

Abstract

Our sensorimotor experience is inherently multiscale, both in time and in space. We can see both the forest and the trees. We make split-second decisions while planning our lives. We dexterously manipulate tiny objects while balancing on a bike. By contrast, artificial sensing, decision-making, and action are still typically analyzed and designed as fundamentally single-scale signal-processing steps within a fundamentally single-scale feedback control loop.

I will first review the multiscale nature of sensorimotor control in biological systems. I will then provide an overview of both well-established and ongoing research—methodological as well as applied—in neuromorphic control theory that aims to overcome the current multiscale sensing, decision-making, and action gap between biological systems and machines.

About the speaker

Alessio Franci is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science of the University of Liege and a founder of the ULiege Neuroengineering Lab. He is also a WEL Research Institute researcher through a 2023 WEL-T Starting Grant. In 2025, he shared with A.Bizyaeva and N.Leonard the IEEE CSS George S. Axelby Outstanding Paper Award. Alessio received his MSc from the University of Pisa in 2008 and his PhD from the University of Paris Sud XI in 2012. Between 2012 and 2015 he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Liege, INRIA Lille, and the University of Cambridge. Between 2015 and 2022 he was a professor in the Math Department of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

His main research interests are in neuromorphic control theory, including spiking control systems, excitable analog CMOS circuits, excitable sensors and actuators, and flexible sensorimotor control. He has also been constantly engaged in and always looking for new interdisciplinary collaborations in neuroscience, robotics, art-and-science, molecular biology, and political science.

Your host

Elena Petri, Assistant Professor at the department of Mechanical Engineering.

This lecture is preceded by a lecture by visiting Professor Andreas Malikopoulos of Cornell University on Autonomous Teams: Where Learning Meets Control. Professor Malikopoulos is a guest of Mauro Salazar.

Registration is required but free of charge.