Professor Jonathan Tapson

• Biography
• Areas of Research / Teaching Expertise
• Grants / Current Projects
• Awards and Recognition
• Selected Publications
• Memberships and Engagement
• Contact Details

Biography

Jonathan Tapson is currently the Deputy Dean of the School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics. He has BSc degrees in Physics and Electrical Engineering, and a PhD in Engineering, all from the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He started his career in a state research laboratory before moving to academia as a lecturer at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, where he founded the very successful Center for Instrumentation Research in 2005. He moved to the University of Cape Town in 1997 and was promoted to full professor in 2004. He joined UWS in June 2011.

Professor Tapson's research area is in electronic sensors and systems, and particularly bio-inspired sensors. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and holds 11 patents. His research has led to the founding of three spin-out companies, and he remains very interested in start-up entrepreneurship. His current research activity focuses on networks which can learn to make decisions in the same way that the human brain preforms this task.

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Areas of Research / Teaching Expertise

Electronic sensors; bio-inspired sensors; neuromorphic systems.

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Grants / Current Projects

A Neuromorphic Cross-Correlation Chip, collaboration with UNSW, 2009-present.
Bio-inspired Sensors, NRF Grant, 2007-2010.
Novel Systems for Platinum Processing, Innovation Fund Grant, 2004-2007.

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Awards and Recognition

Fellow of the South African Academy of Engineering, 2009.
Girling Watson Fellow at the University of Sydney, 2007.
President of the South African Council on Automation and Computation, 2006.
Life Member of the Centre for Instrumentation Research, CPUT, 2006.
Best New Neuromorphic Engineer, 2005.

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Selected Publications

Journal Articles

A. Russell, G. Orchard, J. Tapson, E. Niebur, S. Mihalas, R. Etienne-Cummings, Optimization methods for Spiking Neurons and Networks, IEEE Trans. Neural Networks Vol. 21(12), pp.1950-1962, (2010).

D. Karpul, J. Tapson, M. Rapson, A. Jongens and G. Cohen, Limiting factors in acoustic separation of carbon particles in air, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Vol. 127(4), 2153-2158, (2010).

J. Tapson, C. Jin, A. van Schaik, and R. Etienne-Cummings, A First-Order Non-Homogeneous Markov Model for the Response of Spiking Neurons Stimulated by Small Phase-Continuous Signals, Neural Computation, Vol. 21, No. 6: 1554–1588, (2009).

U. Rivett, J. Tapson, Converging Technologies to Save Lives in the Context of HIV/AIDS: The Cell-Life Project, Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement, Vol. 2, 82-89 (2009).

Tara Julia Hamilton, Craig Jin, Andre van Schaik, and Jonathan Tapson, An Active 2-D Silicon Cochlea, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems, 2 (1), 30-43, (2008).

Peer-Reviewed Conference Publications

Tara Julia Hamilton and Jonathan Tapson, A Neuromorphic Cross-Correlation Chip, accepted for publication in Proc. IEEE ISCAS 2011, (2011).

A. McEwan, J. Tapson, A. van Schaik and D. Holder, Spread Spectrum EIT by Code Division Multiplexing, Journal of Physics: Conference Series 224 012143, (2010).

M. Pienaar, J. Tapson, F, van den Bergh and S. Woodborne, A new approach to finding similarities between time series using Cross Wavelet Phase Variance, Proc. PRASA 2010, 207-212, (2010).

J. Tapson, A van Schaik and T. Hamilton, The Self-Tuned Regenerative Electromechanical Parametric Amplifier: a Model for Active Amplification in the Cochlea, Proc. IEEE ISCAS 2010, 1424-1427, (2010).

J. Tapson, Mixed Signal Phase Sensitive Detection, Proc. IEEE ISCAS 2010, 1292-1295, (2010).

(invited) T. Hamilton, J. Tapson, A. Van Schaik and C. Jin, Investigating the implications of Outer Hair Cell connectivity Using a Silicon Cochlea, Proc. IEEE ISCAS 2010, 3817-3720, (2010).

Richard Shephard, Gaetano Gargiulo, Jonathan Tapson, Andrè van Schaik, Craig Jin, Alistair McEwan, A Novel Non-Invasive Pregnancy Detection System for Large Animals, accepted for Pan-Pacific Veterinary Conference (2010).

T. J. Hamilton, J. Tapson, M. Rapson, C. Jin and A. van Schaik, Understanding the mathematics of hearing using electronic circuits, Proceedings of the 9th Biennial Engineering Mathematics and Applications Conference, EMAC-2009, ANZIAM J., Vol. 51, C300--C315, (2010).

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Memberships and Engagement

Member of the Sensors Technical Committee, and the Biological Circuits and Systems Technical Committee, of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society.

Member of the organizing committee and the permanent faculty for the annual NSF-sponsored Telluride Neuromorphic and Cognitive Engineering Workshop, held in Telluride, Colorado, USA each July.

Editorial board member for the journals
IEEE Sensors Journal
Frontiers in Neuroscience: Neurorobotics
Frontiers in Neuroscience: Neuromorphic Engineering
Neuromorphic Engineering (online)

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