The relentless increase in the amount of computational power that is available to society (encapsulated in Moore’s Law) has been well-documented, and conventional computing systems (including computers and cellphones) are all around us (e.g. increasingly in fridges and other consumer products).

But it is now widely-recognised that further development of conventional computing systems is limited by technological bottlenecks, and that the ongoing world-wide rise in energy consumption (and CO₂ emissions) associated with computation is unsustainable. These problems are exacerbated by the massive scale of the computing systems that are required to support the boom in artificial intelligence.

There is therefore a growing demand for new, unconventional approaches to computation that address these problems. Among these are brain-inspired (or neuromorphic) approaches that seek to emulate the energy efficiency and computational power of the biological brain. Such approaches include a range of devices that emulate neurons and synapses, as well as materials, networks and other physical systems with a range of brain-like properties.

In this symposium we will bring together a diverse range of international speakers from across the fields of neuromorphic, unconventional and physical computing, as well as members of the MacDiarmid Institute’s Future Computing research program. Details will be confirmed in October / November but most likely the symposium will most likely run as a parallel session over 2 days of AMN11. 

Semi-confirmed speakers include:

• Wilfried van der Wiel (Twente, Netherlands)
• Daniel Brunner (Besancon, France)
• Hermann Kohlstedt (Kiel, Germany)
• Zdenka Kuncic (Sydney, Australia)
• Carlo Ricciardi (Turin, Italy)
• Jérémie Grisolia (Toulouse, France)
• Ilia Valov (Aachen, Germany)
• Frank Mizrahi (Paris, France)
• Michael Kozicki (Arizona, USA)
• Paolo Milani (Milan, Italy)
• Francesco Caravelli (Los Alamos, USA)
• Rob Elliman (ANU, Australia)
• Sumeet Walia (RMIT, Australia)
• Marco Fanciulli (Milan-Bicocca, Italy) 
• GU Kulkarni (Bangalore, India)
  
• Megumi Akai (Osaka, Japan)
  
• Rainer Waser (Aachen/Julich, Germany)
  
• Chiara Bartolozzi (Genova, Italy)
• Nagy Valanoor (UNSW, Australia)
• Natalie Plank (Wellington, New Zealand) 
  
• Valeria Bragaglia (Zurich, Switzerland)
  
• Ronald Tetzlaff (Dresden, Germany)
  
• Adam Stieg (Los Angeles, USA)
• Chris Nijhuis (Enschede, Netherlands)
• Kazuya Terabe (Tsukuba, Japan)

Abstract and Registration: those interested attending the symposium should submit abstracts and register via the main AMN11 conference website, and indicate their interest in the symposium in the appropriate drop down menus.