IHMC’s associate director will lecture on new frontiers in technology on November 16th.
We are all familiar with the internet, but what do you know about the Internet of Things (IoT)?
During his upcoming lecture at the Institute for Human & Machine Cognition in Ocala, Niranjan Sari, Ph.D., IHMC’s associate director and senior research scientist, will explain IoT.
“My talk will introduce the concept of Internet of Things, along with a little background of its origins in computer networks. IoT permeates many aspects of our lives, whether we are aware of it or not,” Sari offers. “IoT has led to everything from smart electricity meters and smart homes to smart cities in the near future. I will also talk about some work IHMC has been doing by leveraging Internet of Things and touch upon some future capabilities that IoT will bring to society.”
Sari was born in India and lived there until he was 17. He spent a year in the U.S. when he was 4 when his father worked for NASA. He loved playing with Lego sets, “especially the ones that were mechanical in nature. When I was in third grade, my Dad got a computer that I could play with. I was fascinated by the ability to program a computer to make it do something, and that sparked my interest in computers and programming.”
Ken Ford is the founder and CEO of IHMC. A cousin of Sari’s invited him to the U.S., and Sari came to Florida in 1991. As Sari embarked on earning his degree in computer science at the University of West Florida (UWF), he met Ford.
“He became my undergraduate academic advisor,” Sari says. “I started working for IHMC as a student assistant in 1994 and research associate in 1995, when I was doing my master’s degree. After I graduated, I was offered a job and worked my way up.”
Sari also is co-chair of two NATO Research Task Groups, division associate for research in the Military Information Sciences Division at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and a director of research professor in the Intelligent Systems and Robotics Program at UWF.
As for the future he offers, “As the saying goes, we don’t know what we don’t know, but I believe we are on the cusp of some radical technological advances that will be enabled by a combination of capabilities such as IoT and artificial intelligence and machine learning. I think my most important finding is just the vast range of unexplored possibilities that lay ahead.” OS
The November 16th lecture will take place at 15 SE Osceola Ave. To learn more and RSVP, go to ihmc.us/life/evening_lectures/ocala-lecture-series
