I received a degree in Psychology (1994) and a degree in Civil Engineering (1992) from the University of Zagreb, Croatia.
My masters degree (1997) and a Ph.D. (1999) I received form a Department of Psychology, at the University of Oklahoma, USA.
In 1999 I joined the Department of Neurophysiology at the Max-Planck Institute for Brain Research and soon after started a pioneering work on highly parallel recordings from cat visual cortex by using multiple Michigan probes simultaneously.
In 2010 I received a Private Docent title from the University of Zagreb, and in 2014 an Associate Professor title from the same university.
My research was supported by grants from Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, the Hertie Foundation, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and other sources.
Since July 2016 I am working in industry, reflecting my growing interest in AI and machine learning. Watch these two startups: savedroid and RobotsGoMental.
Influences:
The book that probably had the biggest influence on my thinking about mind, brain and AI was:
Dreyfus, H. L. (1972). What computers can’t do. New York: MIT Press.
It is an attempt to solve the problems posed in this book that led to the development of the theory of practopoiesis.
Perhaps the second most influential book on me was:
Dawkins, R. (1989). The selfish gene. 1976. revised edn. Oxford.
This book imprinted into me a deep respect for the interactions between the organism and its environment. If you use the principles from The Selfish Gene and apply them to solve the problems from What Computers Can’t Do, practopoiesis comes out as a result.
Trivia: My Erdos number is 3.