Leonid Perlovsky

Dr. Leonid Perlovsky is a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, Principal Research Physicist and Technical Advisor at the United States Air Force Research Laboratory, Hanscom Air Force Base. He is the Program Manager for United States Department of Defense (DOD) Semantic Web program and leads several research projects, including cognitive algorithms, modeling of evolution of languages and cultures. From 1985 to 1999, he served as Chief Scientist at Nichols Research, a $0.5B high-tech DOD contractor leading the corporate research in intelligent systems, neural networks, sensor fusion, and automatic target recognition.

He served as professor at Novosibirsk State University and New York University, and participated as a principal in commercial startups developing tools for text understanding, Biotechnology, and financial predictions. His company predicted the market crash following September 11, 2001 attacks a week before the event, detecting activities of Al-Qaeda traders, and later helped SEC tracking the perpetrators. He is invited as a keynote plenary speaker and tutorial lectures worldwide, and has published more than 320 papers and 10 book chapters and authored three books, including “Neural Networks and Intellect,” Oxford University Press, 2000 (currently in the 3rd printing) and two books with Springer in 2007,. Dr. Perlovsky organizes conferences on Computational intelligence, Chairs IEEE Boston Computational Intelligence Chapter. He serves as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, Editor-at-Large for "New Mathematics and Natural Computation" and Editor-in-Chief for “Physics of Life Reviews.” He received National and International awards including the IEEE Distinguished Member of Boston Section Award 2005; the US AFRL Charles Ryan Memorial Award for Basic Research, 2007; Gabor Award 2007, the top engineering award from the International Neural Network Society; and John McLucas Award 2007, the highest US Air Force Award for science.

His current research interests include modeling mechanisms of the mind: neural modeling fields, knowledge instinct, aesthetic emotions, emotions of beautiful and sublime, language, language evolution, emotionality of languages, language and cognition, evolution of languages and cultures, symbols as psychological processes, evolution of consciousness, languages, and cultures, mathematical intelligence and art, role of music in evolution of consciousness and cultures, science and religion, including scientific explanations for the role of sacred values in the workings of the mind, and why religious teleology is equivalent to scientific causality.