Doctor Robert Birge
University of Connecticut 
Storrs, Connecticut 

Monday, October 1, 2001
3:00 pm (CT)
3269 Beckman Institute

Abstract

This presentation will explore the use of the protein, bacteriorhodopsin, in optical three-dimensional memories and parallel associative processors. Three-dimensional memories store information in a memory volume element, and provide as much as a thousand-fold improvement in memory storage capacity over current technology. The associative memory operates in a fashion somewhat analogous to the human brain and responds to input data by finding (in a few nanoseconds) the closest match within the data base and feeding this information, and any associated information, to the output. Such a memory is critical to the development of artificial intelligence. The use of site directed mutagenesis and directed evolution to improve the properties of the protein for specific applications will also be discussed. Although working prototypes have been developed, a number of cost/performance and architectural issues must be resolved prior to commercialization.

Tea and coffee will be served in R3151 Beckman Institute at 2:15pm.