Honors College Events
Wednesday, October 20, 2021
Second Annual Gumerman Lecture
Join Honors for the first Gumerman Professor in Honors Public Lecture, “Robot Brains, Human Minds: A Short Tour of Learning and Thinking” with Dr. Paul Flikkema, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Gumerman Professor in Honors, at 7pm on Wednesday, October 20. This event will be held in the Cline Library Assembly Hall.
Robots and artificial intelligence are constantly in the news, and researchers are exploring how to help robots become smarter. This begs the question: How do we learn? In this talk, I will explore how humans, as individuals and societies, have learned to live healthy, productive and meaningful lives. I will also attempt to compare how we learn with how we endow robots with “intelligence”, and sketch the role of technology in the ways that we learn and how we train computers to be “smart.”
This event can be used by current NAU Honors College students as an Honors Exploration event.
2021 Virtual NAU Honors College Symposium
Join the NAU Honors College for poster and paper presentations in an entirely virtual conference environment! Sessions will be available through a link posted HERE on December 3.
Are you a current Honors student looking to submit a paper or poster to present?
View the Fall 2021 Honors Symposium!
Past Events
2020 Virtual NAU Honors College Symposium
Join the NAU Honors College for poster and paper presentations in an entirely virtual conference environment! Sessions will be available through a link posted HERE.
Are you a current Honors student looking to submit a paper or poster to present?
View the Fall 2020 Honors Symposium!
Wednesday, October 21, 2020
First Annual Gumerman Lecture
Join Honors for the first Gumerman Professor in Honors Public Lecture, “Will Robots Ever (Really) Think?” with Dr. Paul Flikkema at 7pm on Wednesday, October 21. This event will be held entirely remotely on our NAU Honors College YouTube channel.
Our abilities as humans seem amazing to us, and we have always wondered how our brain gives us these abilities. The explosive growth of computing power in the last half century makes us ask: Will computers someday have something like `intelligence’, with the thinking power of a brain? This talk explores this question by discussing the state of the art of computing, the idea of artificial intelligence, successes and failures, and possible avenues for further development.
Questions can be submitted during the event for Dr. Flikkema to respond to. We look forward to you joining us!
This event can be used by current NAU Honors College students as an Honors Exploration event.