Daniel joined Thinking Systems as a research fellow studying navigation in conceptual spaces. He completed a Bachelor of Engineering (Electronics and Computer Systems) and a Bachelor of Science (Research and Development) as part of Swinburne University’s Vice-Chancellors research scholarship program. Daniel’s research interests include the design and application of Computational Intelligence techniques to difficult Engineering and Science problems, in particular those that contain high numbers of dimensions and conflicting objectives. In his PhD, ‘Niching Ant Colony Optimisation’, he studied the effect of population diversity on ant-inspired algorithm efficacy, completed at the Intelligent Systems Lab, Swinburne University, Melbourne.

David Ball joined Thinking Systems as research fellow with particular focus on the engineering facets of the project. He holds a Bachelor of Computer Systems Engineering (Mechatronics) from The University of Queensland and completed his PhD in Mechatronics Engineering. David's research interests are in robots and agent systems for real dynamic, spatial environments. In particular, robot mobility for wheeled and legged robots, multi-agent coordination, control and navigation. David has held technical and organisational committee positions, including for the international event RoboCup. He has represented the University of Queensland five times at the international robot soccer competition, achieving second place twice.

Oliver obtained his Diploma (MSc.) in Psychology from the University of Oldenburg (Germany) in 2003 and his PhD from the University of Regensburg (Germany) in 2006. His doctoral thesis investigated the neural correlates of audio-visual motion perception and the role of the neocerebellum in eye movements. Then he spent one year as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oslo (Norway) under the supervision of Professor Svein Magnussen on the investigation of the neural correlates of perceptual memory. He is currently employed as a research fellow at the Queensland Brain Institute in Prof. Jason Mattingley's Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory. His present research is on human navigation, with the focus on how human beings use and process visual landmarks for navigating successfully through a novel environment. The research methods used include the assessment of behavioural performance as well as neuroimaging techniques.

Allen completed his PhD at the Australian National University in December 2007. His research goals are to study of animal navigation using both top-down and bottom-up theoretical methods to understand specific and general principles of neuronal network function. Methods range from pure mathematical theory to closed-loop computer simulations of navigating agents with biologically plausible neuronal networks.

Tien Luu joined Thinking Systems as a research fellow studying insect navigation. Previous post-doc experience was in ion channel electrophysiology. One aspect of this theme of the Thinking systems project is to record brain activity from honeybees during navigational tasks. Tien’s research experience is in electrophysiology of ligand-gated ion channels; point-mutagenesis in recombinant GABAA receptors. Her Thinking Systems research goal: electrophysiological recordings from live honeybees, looking at candidate cellular substrates of navigation systems.

Michael holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering and a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Queensland, awarded in 2006 and 2002 respectively. He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Engineering Systems at the Queensland University of Technology, after previously working as a Research Fellow at the Queensland Brain Institute and in the Robotics Laboratory at the University of Queensland. His research interests include Simultaneous Localisation And Mapping, cognitive modelling of the rodent hippocampus and entorhinal cortex, and biologically inspired robot navigation.

Peter obtained his PhD in cognitive modelling with neural networks from the University of Queensland in 2002. He then worked in the software industry in Australia and the USA for several years before returning to academia in 2007, joining the Thinking Systems project. His research interests include models of spiking neurons and spiking neural networks, the hippocampus and cortex.

Francois is a neuropharmacologist working as a Research Associate at the Queensland Brain Institute. He received his PhD from the University of Grenoble, France, in 2001. His research was focused on the mechanism of deep-brain stimulation used to improve Parkinson’s disease symptoms. For that work he used animal models of Parkinson’s disease, localised brain lesions, intracerebral microdialysis and high-pressure liquid chromatography. After completing his PhD, he moved to the National Institute on drug abuse where he worked for four years on neurotransmission in the basal ganglia and more specifically on the effects of dopamine using electrophysiology and microiontophoresis in freely behaving rats. Since 2006, he has worked with Professor Pankaj Sah at the Queensland Brain Institute on synaptic plasticity involved in emotional memory, a mechanism regulated by dopamine.