Gail Alexandra Carpenter is an American

cognitive scientist Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition (in a broad sense). Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include percep ...

neuroscientist A neuroscientist (or neurobiologist) is a scientist specializing in neuroscience that deals with the anatomy and function of neurons, Biological neural network, neural circuits, and glia, and their Behavior, behavioral, biological, and psycholo ...

and

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

, known for her work with

Stephen Grossberg Stephen Grossberg (born December 31, 1939) is a cognitive scientist, theoretical and computational psychologist, neuroscientist, mathematician, biomedical engineer, and neuromorphic technologist. He is the Wang Professor of Cognitive and Neural ...

developing

adaptive resonance theory Adaptive resonance theory (ART) is a theory developed by Stephen Grossberg and Gail Carpenter on aspects of how the brain processes information. It describes a number of artificial neural network models which use supervised and unsupervised lea ...

, a theory of how the human brain processes information, and for her work on the

Hodgkin–Huxley model The Hodgkin–Huxley model, or conductance-based model, is a mathematical model that describes how action potentials in neurons are initiated and propagated. It is a set of nonlinear differential equations that approximates the electrical engine ...

of how

neuron A neuron (American English), neurone (British English), or nerve cell, is an membrane potential#Cell excitability, excitable cell (biology), cell that fires electric signals called action potentials across a neural network (biology), neural net ...

s operate. She is a

professor emerita ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...

of mathematics and statistics at

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. BU was founded in 1839 by a group of Boston Methodism, Methodists with its original campus in Newbury (town), Vermont, Newbur ...

, where she was also a professor of cognitive and neural systems.

Education and career

Carpenter attended the

International School of Geneva The International School of Geneva (in French: ''École internationale de Genève''), commonly known as Ecolint, is a private, non-profit international school based in Geneva, Switzerland. Background Founded in 1924 in the service of the Leagu ...

then went to the

University of Colorado The University of Colorado (CU) is a system of public universities in Colorado. It consists of four institutions: the University of Colorado Boulder, the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, the University of Colorado Denver, and the U ...

. She completed her Ph.D. in mathematics in 1975 at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. It was founded in 1848 when Wisconsin achieved st ...

, with the dissertation ''Traveling Wave Solutions of Nerve Impulse Equations'' supervised by

Charles C. Conley Charles Cameron Conley (26 September 1933 – 20 November 1984) was an American mathematician who worked on dynamical systems. The Conley index theory and the Conley–Zehnder theorem are named after him. Early life and education Conley was born ...

. Carpenter was a faculty member at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

and at

Northeastern University Northeastern University (NU or NEU) is a private university, private research university with its main campus in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was founded by the Boston Young Men's Christian Association in 1898 as an all-male instit ...

before joining Boston University.

Recognition

Carpenter was the first woman to receive the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office ...

(IEEE) Neural Networks Pioneer Award in 2008. She received the International Neural Network Society (INNS) Gabor Award in 1999. She is a Fellow of the INNS, and was named as an

IEEE Fellow , the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and ot ...

in 2013.

Personal life

Carpenter married

in 1979.

Selected publications

*Carpenter, G. A. (2019). Looking to the future: Learning from experience, averting catastrophe. Neural Networks. *Carpenter, G. A., & Grossberg, S. (1987). A massively parallel architecture for a self-organizing neural pattern recognition machine. Computer Vision, Graphics and Image Processing, 37(1), 54–115. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0734-189X(87)80014-2 *Carpenter, G. A., Grossberg, S., Markuzon, N., Reynolds, J. H., & Rosen, D. B. (1992). Fuzzy ARTMAP: A Neural Network Architecture for Incremental Supervised Learning of Analog Multidimensional Maps. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, 3(5), 698–713. https://doi.org/10.1109/72.159059 *Carpenter, G. A., Grossberg, S., & Reynolds, J. H. (1991). ARTMAP: Supervised real-time learning and classification of nonstationary data by a self-organizing neural network. Neural Networks, 4(5), 565–588. https://doi.org/10.1016/0893-6080(91)90012-T *Carpenter, G. A., Grossberg, S., & Rosen, D. B. (1991). Fuzzy ART: Fast stable learning and categorization of analog patterns by an adaptive resonance system. Neural Networks, 4(6), 759–771. https://doi.org/10.1016/0893-6080(91)90056-B

References

External links

*
INNS You Tube video interview with Gail Carpenter
Recorded January 14, 2021. *Boston University Staff web page fo
Professor Gail Carpenter.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Carpenter, Gail Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American cognitive scientists Boston University faculty 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians University of Colorado Boulder alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni Northeastern University faculty International School of Geneva alumni 20th-century American women mathematicians 21st-century American women mathematicians