Robert W. Newcomb

Background

Professor Newcomb directs the Microsystems Laboratory at UMD and is known for:

• His outstanding students, having graduated over 60 Ph.D.s
• Design and fabrication of the first IC micromotor
• His books in VLSI, control, and circuit theory, especially the citation classic “Linear Multiport Synthesis“
• The first analog circuit designed specifically to give chaos
• His n-dimensional Maxwell’s equations and their application to human emotions
• His support in perpetuity of the American Academy of Poets Prize at UMD
• Conceptualization of the Soliton, the P-Adic, and the Fibonacci computers
• The initiation of the semistate theory of circuits
• His n-port synthesis techniques for analog and DSP systems
• His distributional field-extension theory of time varying systems and his square-law non-associative algebra of state described systems
• His pulse coded neural type cell and associated networks
• VLSI implementation of biologically realistic neural components
• The theory behind the KHN filters
• His theory of curve tracing and knot tying robots
• The initiation of the MTNS International Symposium
• His facilitation of the Applied Mathematics Program at UMD
• Initiation of the deep brain research program with Nevine El-Leithy
  Some information on this is at www.deepbrain.umd.edu
• Research Topics under present activity
• Modeling of live neurons on a VLSI chip
• DSP models of the inner ear from Kemp echoes for diagnostics
• Theory and VLSI realization of the soliton computer
• VLSI circuits for analog, digital, and integer valued neural networks
• Functional neural networks and their realizations
• IC realization of n-limit cycle oscillators
• Theory and realization of hysteresis based chaos generators
• Semi-state theory for synthesis
• Knot tying robotics

Education

• PhD: University of California, Berkeley, 1960
• MS: Stanford University, 1957
• BS: Purdue University, 1955

Research Interests

• Ear type systems
• Tinnitus
• neural networks
• osteoporosis modeling
• bio-energy harvesting
• Deep Brain Stimulation
• Neural Circuits
• Auditory Neuroscience

View recent research projects

Service & Organizations:

• Life Fellow IEEE
• IEEE CAS Society Golden Jubilee Medal awardee
• IEEE CAS Society Education awardee
• Fellow AIMBE
• Sponsor high school students and post-bacs along with Newcomb lectures at NIH
• Handle high school biomedical researchers from Maryland and other high schools
• Edit for Neurocomputing journal

Special Honors:

• The “2015 Friend of Eleanor Roosevelt High School” for guiding over the years senior students in research
• The “Dr. Robert W. Newcomb Inspiration Research Fund” established by former student R. Rekhi

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