Curious to explore the technology advancing Artificial Intelligence beyond the usual headlines? Brains and Machines will introduce you to the people and ideas behind neuromorphic engineering, bio-inspired robotics, and other transformative technologies shaping AI’s future. From spiking neural networks and event-cameras to models of attention and mechanisms for prosthetic control, we investigate how machine cognition is moving forward.Join Dr Sunny Bains, a scientist, journalist, and lecturer at University College London, as she talks to researchers, engineers, and computer scientists from across the field. With co-host, Dr Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague, and commentator Prof Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the post-interview discussion provides context and insight into the featured innovations.Produced in conjunction with Electronic Engineering Times. Check out the EETimes Current podcast for more.Dr D’Angelo gratefully acknowledges the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship.

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In this month’s <a href="http://brainsandmachines.net/" rel="nofollow">Brains and Machines</a> podcast, Dr. Jeff Shainline talks about superconducting neural hardware. Currently in development at Great Sky in Boulder, Colorado, the new systems will incorporate photonic interconnects and a neuromorphic approach to intelligence. Discussion follows with Dr. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuliadangelo/" rel="nofollow">Giulia D’Angelo</a> from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor <a href="https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/ralph-etienne-cummings/" rel="nofollow">Ralph Etienne-Cummings</a> of Johns Hopkins University.

Can Great Sky’s Light-Connected AI Enable Bigger Brains?

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In this latest episode of <a href="http://brainsandmachines.net/" rel="nofollow">Brains and Machines</a>, Dr. <a href="https://www.tue.nl/en/research/researchers/patty-stabile/" rel="nofollow">Patty Stabile</a> of the Eindhoven University of Technology chats with us about her optical neural networks with ultra-low-latency processing, and the semiconductor optical amplifiers that make them possible. Discussion follows with Dr. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuliadangelo/" rel="nofollow">Giulia D’Angelo</a> from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor <a href="https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/ralph-etienne-cummings/" rel="nofollow">Ralph Etienne-Cummings</a> of Johns Hopkins University.

Will Photonics Loosen the Bottlenecks in Neural Systems?

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This latest episode of <a href="http://brainsandmachines.net/" rel="nofollow">Brains and Machines</a> features a panel discussion on neuromorphic engineering and physical computing held at the <a href="https://www.sites.se.manchester.ac.uk/atoms2bits/" rel="nofollow">Atoms to Bits: The AlphaBet of Intelligence v2.0</a> conference at the University of Manchester, held in February 2026. The panelists were <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/damienquerlioz/" rel="nofollow">Dr. Damien Querlioz</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/julian-buechel/" rel="nofollow">Dr. Julian Büchel</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamalika-banerjee-78228629/" rel="nofollow">Professor Tamalika Banerjee</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxence-ernoult-525932b7/" rel="nofollow">Dr. Maxence Ernoult</a>, and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevebfurber/" rel="nofollow">Professor Steve Furber</a>, and the session was chaired by <a href="https://www.sunnybains.com/" rel="nofollow">Dr. Sunny Bains</a> of University College London. Discussion follows with Dr. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuliadangelo/" rel="nofollow">Giulia D’Angelo</a> from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor <a href="https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/ralph-etienne-cummings/" rel="nofollow">Ralph Etienne-Cummings</a> of Johns Hopkins University.

Fixing AI’s Bottlenecks: Memory, Scale, and Sparsity

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In this latest episode of <a href="http://brainsandmachines.net/" rel="nofollow">Brains and Machines</a>, EE Times Senior Reporter Sally Ward-Foxton talks to Dr. <a href="https://www.sunnybains.com/" rel="nofollow">Sunny Bains</a> of the University College London. They discuss the importance of power in all AI systems, the benefit of having dedicated inference chips, and where neuromorphic fits into the market. Discussion follows with Dr. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuliadangelo/" rel="nofollow">Giulia D’Angelo</a> from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor <a href="https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/ralph-etienne-cummings/" rel="nofollow">Ralph Etienne-Cummings</a> of Johns Hopkins University.

Can the Nvidia Monopoly on AI Chips Be Broken?

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In this latest episode of <a href="http://brainsandmachines.net/" rel="nofollow">Brains and Machines</a>, Professor Rodolphe Sepulchre, a control theorist from the University of Cambridge, talks to Dr. <a href="https://www.sunnybains.com/" rel="nofollow">Sunny Bains</a> of the University College London. They discuss the inspiration he took from studying biological neurons, why both discrete and continuous behaviors are inherent to how they work, and why building neurons is often easier than simulating them. Discussion follows with Dr. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuliadangelo/" rel="nofollow">Giulia D’Angelo</a> from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor <a href="https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/ralph-etienne-cummings/" rel="nofollow">Ralph Etienne-Cummings</a> of Johns Hopkins University.

Neuromorphic Spikes Unify Control and Decision Making

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Neuronova is an analog neuromorphic startup based in Milan, Italy. In this episode of <a href="http://brainsandmachines.net/" rel="nofollow">Brains and Machines</a>, the CEO and CTO talk to Dr. <a href="https://www.sunnybains.com/" rel="nofollow">Sunny Bains</a> of University College London about their inference processor that idles at less than 10 nanowatts and what they hope to do with it. Discussion follows with Dr. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuliadangelo/" rel="nofollow">Giulia D’Angelo</a> from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor <a href="https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/ralph-etienne-cummings/" rel="nofollow">Ralph Etienne-Cummings</a> of Johns Hopkins University.

Green Always-On Sensing With Neuronova’s Sub-μwatt Chip?

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Professor <a href="https://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~celiasmi/" rel="nofollow">Chris Eliasmith</a> is a computer scientist and philosopher who’s been modelling cognitive systems for almost three decades. In this episode of <a href="http://brainsandmachines.net/" rel="nofollow">Brains and Machines</a>, he talks to Dr. <a href="https://www.sunnybains.com/" rel="nofollow">Sunny Bains</a> of University College London about his neural engineering framework and the semantic pointer architecture his team have developed to implement it. Discussion follows with Dr. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuliadangelo/" rel="nofollow">Giulia D’Angelo</a> from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor <a href="https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/ralph-etienne-cummings/" rel="nofollow">Ralph Etienne-Cummings</a> of Johns Hopkins University.

An Architecture for Building Brains from Top to Bottom?

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Dr. <a href="https://www.uni-ulm.de/in/fns/institut/mitarbeiter-innen/professoren/claudia-lenk/" rel="nofollow">Claudia Lenk’s</a> group creates brain-inspired hearing systems with micromechanical hair cells. In this episode of <a href="http://brainsandmachines.net/" rel="nofollow">Brains and Machines</a>, she talks to Dr. <a href="https://www.sunnybains.com/" rel="nofollow">Sunny Bains</a> of University College London about the advantages of the approach and how it could be applied to speech processing in AI. Discussion follows with Dr. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuliadangelo/" rel="nofollow">Giulia D’Angelo</a> from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor <a href="https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/ralph-etienne-cummings/" rel="nofollow">Ralph Etienne-Cummings</a> of Johns Hopkins University.

Artificial Hearing: From Ear Drums to Tuning Forks

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<a href="https://www.sunnybains.com/" rel="nofollow">Sunny</a> talks to Dr <a href="https://www.sandia.gov/ccr/staff/james-bradley-aimone/" rel="nofollow">Brad Aimone</a> from Sandia National Laboratories who works with the world’s biggest neuromorphic platforms. He explains how this allows him to think deeply about what such platforms are good for and how we might be able to get to a theory of neuromorphic computational power. After the interview, discussion follows with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuliadangelo/" rel="nofollow">Giulia</a> and <a href="https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/ralph-etienne-cummings/" rel="nofollow">Ralph</a>.

A Theoretical Framework for Neuromorphic Technology?

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<a href="https://www.sunnybains.com/" rel="nofollow">Sunny</a> talks to Prof <a href="https://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/bwebb/" rel="nofollow">Barbara Webb</a> from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland​, who uses physical robots to validate neural mechanisms in crickets, ants, and bees. She talks about her work inspired by the philosophy that biological cognition can only be truly understood by building complete sensory-motor loops that work in the real world. After the interview, discussion follows with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuliadangelo/" rel="nofollow">Giulia</a> and <a href="https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/ralph-etienne-cummings/" rel="nofollow">Ralph</a>.

Neurons Close the Loop from Insect Perception to Action

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Professor Gert Cauwenberghs has been working toward building brain-scale systems for decades. At the University of California San Diego, he’s now one of the leaders of the <a href="https://ai.utsa.edu/thor/" rel="nofollow">Neuromorphic Commons</a> hub, also known as Thor, which will give the wider community access to neuromorphic hardware and simulators. In this episode of <a href="http://brainsandmachines.net/" rel="nofollow">Brains and Machines</a>, he talks to Dr. <a href="https://www.sunnybains.com/" rel="nofollow">Sunny Bains</a> of University College London about his approach to making systems that use minimal energy, are highly interconnected at all levels, and are surprisingly flexible. Discussion follows with Dr. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuliadangelo/" rel="nofollow">Giulia D’Angelo</a> from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor <a href="https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/ralph-etienne-cummings/" rel="nofollow">Ralph Etienne-Cummings</a> of Johns Hopkins University.

Can Neuromorphic Be Low-Power, Reconfigurable, and Scalable?

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Professor Gordon Cheng builds humanoid robots that can feel their environment using artificial skin. In this episode of <a href="http://brainsandmachines.net/" rel="nofollow">Brains and Machines</a>, he talks to Dr. <a href="https://www.sunnybains.com/" rel="nofollow">Sunny Bains</a> of University College London about how the skin was designed, how it improves safety, and why neuromorphic engineering will be important for machine autonomy. Discussion follows with Dr. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuliadangelo/" rel="nofollow">Giulia D’Angelo</a> from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor <a href="https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/ralph-etienne-cummings/" rel="nofollow">Ralph Etienne-Cummings</a> of Johns Hopkins University.

Event-Driven E-Skins Protect Both Robots and Humans

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Dr. Charlotte Frenkel from the Technical University of Delft set records with a low-power neuromorphic chip she designed as part of her Ph.D. In this episode of <a href="http://brainsandmachines.net/" rel="nofollow">Brains and Machines</a>, she talks to Dr. <a href="https://www.sunnybains.com/" rel="nofollow">Sunny Bains</a> of University College London about what she has learned about building simplicity into chips and integrity into benchmarks. Discussion follows with Dr. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuliadangelo/" rel="nofollow">Giulia D’Angelo</a> from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor <a href="https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/ralph-etienne-cummings/" rel="nofollow">Ralph Etienne-Cummings</a> of Johns Hopkins University.

Digital Prototypes May Enable Analog Neuromorphic Chips

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<a href="https://research.ibm.com/people/dharmendra-modha" rel="nofollow">Dharmendra Modha</a>’s TrueNorth chip added the word neuromorphic to the technorati lexicon back in 2014. In this episode of <a href="http://brainsandmachines.net/" rel="nofollow">Brains and Machines</a>, he talks to Dr. <a href="https://www.sunnybains.com/" rel="nofollow">Sunny Bains</a> of University College London about how that project led to his work on NorthPole and the axiomatic approach he took to design. Discussion follows with Dr. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuliadangelo/" rel="nofollow">Giulia D’Angelo</a> from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor <a href="https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/ralph-etienne-cummings/" rel="nofollow">Ralph Etienne-Cummings</a> of Johns Hopkins University.

IBM Used Mathematics as Compass on Journey to NorthPole

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For 50 years Dr. <a href="https://www.salk.edu/scientist/terrence-sejnowski/" rel="nofollow">Terry Sejnowski</a> has modelled the brain and used his insights to help inform AI. In this episode of <a href="http://brainsandmachines.net/" rel="nofollow">Brains and Machines</a>, he talks to Dr. <a href="https://www.sunnybains.com/" rel="nofollow">Sunny Bains</a> of the University College London about how information flows both ways between neuroscience and engineered intelligence, proposes a new way of looking at memory and considers the Hopfield-Hinton Nobel Prize. Discussion follows with Dr. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuliadangelo/" rel="nofollow">Giulia D’Angelo</a> from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor <a href="https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/ralph-etienne-cummings/" rel="nofollow">Ralph Etienne-Cummings</a> of Johns Hopkins University.

Rippling Signals May Provide Working Memory in the Brain

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Dr. <a href="https://ece.gatech.edu/directory/jennifer-olson-hasler" rel="nofollow">Jennifer Hasler</a> of Georgia Tech is best known for her work with field programmable analog arrays (FPAAs). In this episode of <a href="http://brainsandmachines.net/" rel="nofollow">Brains and Machines</a>, she talks about the importance of, and progress in, analog electronics for AI with Dr. <a href="https://www.sunnybains.com/" rel="nofollow">Sunny Bains</a> of the University College London. Discussion follows with Dr .<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuliadangelo/" rel="nofollow">Giulia D’Angelo</a> from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor <a href="https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/ralph-etienne-cummings/" rel="nofollow">Ralph Etienne-Cummings</a> of Johns Hopkins University.

Making Analog Chip Designs Without Analog Designers

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Tony Lewis, CTO for BrainChip, and four other key scientists talk to <a href="https://www.sunnybains.com/" rel="nofollow">Sunny Bains</a> of the University College London. They discuss their business strategy, their temporal event-based neural network (TENN), and the next iteration of the Akida chip. Discussion follows with <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuliadangelo/" rel="nofollow">Giulia D’Angelo</a> from the Czech Technical University in Prague and <a href="https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/ralph-etienne-cummings/" rel="nofollow">Ralph Etienne-Cummings</a> of Johns Hopkins University.

BrainChip’s IP for Targeting AI Applications at the Edge

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In this episode of Brains and Machines, emeritus Professor <a href="https://rodneybrooks.com/" rel="nofollow">Rodney Brooks</a> of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, currently CTO of Robust AI, talks about bottom-up and top-down approaches to robotics and AI with Dr. <a href="https://www.sunnybains.com/" rel="nofollow">Sunny Bains</a> of University College London. Discussion follows with Dr. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuliadangelo/" rel="nofollow">Giulia D’Angelo</a> from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor <a href="https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/ralph-etienne-cummings/" rel="nofollow">Ralph Etienne-Cummings</a> of Johns Hopkins University.

Robots Need Physical, Not Just Artificial, Intelligence

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In this new episode of Brains and Machines, Dr. Katie Schuman of the University of Tennessee explains the advantages of evolutionary approaches in neural processing to Dr.  <a href="https://www.sunnybains.com/" rel="nofollow">Sunny Bains</a> of University College London. Discussion follows with Dr. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuliadangelo/" rel="nofollow">Giulia D’Angelo</a> from the Czech Technical University in Prague and Professor <a href="https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/ralph-etienne-cummings/" rel="nofollow">Ralph Etienne-Cummings</a> of Johns Hopkins University.

Embracing the Efficiency of the Neuromorphic Hairball

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In this episode of Brains and Machines, UCL’s <a href="https://www.sunnybains.com/" rel="nofollow">Sunny Bains</a> talks to four key figures at <a href="https://innatera.com/" rel="nofollow">Innatera</a>, a spin out from the University of Delft in the Netherlands: Dr Petrut Bogdan, Neuromorphic Architect; Dr Amir Zjajo, Chief Scientific Officer; Vasile Toma, Vice President for Engineering; and Dr Sumeet Kumar, Chief Executive Officer. They are hoping that their latest spiking neural network chip will become AI of choice for people working on sensor applications. Discussion follows with Dr. <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/giuliadangelo/" rel="nofollow">Giulia D’Angelo</a> Marie Curie Fellow at The Czech Technical University in Prague, and Professor <a href="https://engineering.jhu.edu/faculty/ralph-etienne-cummings/" rel="nofollow">Ralph Etienne-Cummings</a> of Johns Hopkins University.

Chip Combines Analog and Digital Neurons for Sensor Data

A podcast about neuromorphic engineering and bio-inspired technology

Curious to explore the technology advancing Artificial Intelligence beyond the usual headlines? Brains and Machines will introduce you to the people and ideas behind neuromorphic engineering, bio-inspired robotics, and other transformative technologies shaping AI’s future. From spiking neural networks and event-cameras to models of attention and mechanisms for prosthetic control, we investigate how machine cognition is moving forward.

Join Dr Sunny Bains, a scientist, journalist, and lecturer at University College London, as she talks to researchers, engineers, and computer scientists from across the field. With co-host, Dr Giulia D’Angelo from the Czech Technical University in Prague, and commentator Prof Ralph Etienne-Cummings from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, the post-interview discussion provides context and insight into the featured innovations.

Produced in conjunction with Electronic Engineering Times. Check out the EETimes Current podcast for more.

Dr D’Angelo gratefully acknowledges the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship.