Dr. Pedro Medina Martins After the High School I began my medical preparation with the best neurosurgeon of my country (with the help of my father, a physician too). This has allowed me the watching in vivo of dozens of different types of surgical operations – of which those to the brain were especially striking (this happened in the 60s). However, for several reasons meaningless here, (amongst which the sudden death of my medical mentor was one of them) I had to change my future professional career and instead of Medicine I decided to follow Electronic Engineering. There was a reason for that: it was the time in which the first electronic computers came to light and the paradigm of the ‘brain like a computer ‘ was prevailing. It was also the epoch in which Cybernetics and Wiener, McCulhoc, Von Foerster and Gordon Pask amongst others (the latter two my supervisors of my PhD in Brunel University, UK,) were overwhelming as regards AI. My thesis entitled “Science as a Growing System” last 11 years to be concluded and it entailed philosophy, conscious and unconscious mental processes, neuro-fuzzy systems, a lot of neurophysiological data, and a unconventional type of computer, presently in the Defense Department of Cranfield University. Limitations of this computer presented to Gordon after the thesis, led him to suggest me their overcoming via Robotics and - furthermore - via the construction of a Conscious Robot, the research line upon which my attention has been devoted since 1999. Presently I am finishing a book entitled “Design for a Being”, the outcome of all these years of studying and research.

Dr. Pedro Medina Martins Research Interests are In brief, instead of making surgical operations in human brains, I am doing the same in robotic bodies and brains.