Peter Bock, Professor Emeritus of Engineering, The George Washington University, Washington DC

Bock received his undergraduate degree in physics and mathematics from Ripon College in 1962. After completing his graduate studies at Purdue University, he joined the research faculty at IIT Research Institute (IITRI) in Chicago, where he was eventually posted permanently to NASA to manage the development of software for the Earth and Lunar orbital missions of the Apollo Program.

Following the success of the first Apollo manned Lunar-landing mission, in 1970 Bock was invited to join the Computer Science faculty at The George WashingtonUniversity in Washington DC. GWU has remained his professional home for thepast 40 years, where he is now a full professor in the field of machineintelligence and cognition. As well as teaching courses in machine intelligence and cognition, he pioneered the development of Collective Learning Systems theory, an adaptive statistical learning paradigm for artificial intelligence.

Seeking practical applications of this new paradigm, in 1989 Bock spent a sabbatical at the Research Institute for Applied Knowledge Processing (FAW) in Ulm, Germany, to develop the software engine known as ALISA (Adaptive Learning Image and Signal Processing). Since 1990 he has been the Director of Project ALISA at GWU to extend the capabilities of ALISA and develop practical applications for it. Project ALISA has been continuously funded since its inception by several domestic and foreign industrial firms, including Robert Bosch GmbH and Lockheed-Martin (Hubble Space Telescope Project); and several government agencies, including NIST, NASA, the US Navy, and most recently the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA/DoD) for counter-terrorism research, using an ALISA engine to locate radiological weapons (e.g., dirty bombs); and to classifyobjects-of-interest in x-ray images. This funding has supported about 15 graduate students over the last 20 years.

Over his 40-year academic career, Bock has published about 100 refereed papers on CLS theory and ALISA, several book chapters, and presented many colloquia and seminars around the world. In 1993 World Scientific Publishing Company published his book The Emergence of Artificial Cognition: An Introduction to Collective Learning. Then, in recognition of his long experience with designing and conducting complex industrial research projects in a wide variety of domains, Academic Press (now Elsevier) invited Bock to write a trade reference book about research methods, and in 2001 his book Getting it Right: R&D Methods for Science and Engineering was published, giving voice to another field in which Bock had developed a strong interest.

In 2008 Bock chaired an International Advisory Board (IAB) appointed by the Macedonian Government to design and implement a new state-of the-art all-English-speaking undergraduate US-style University for Information Science and Technology (UIST) on Lake Ohrid in southwest Macedonia. The IAB plans included building an entirely green institution, carbon-neutral and self-powered by solar cells, wind turbines, and the vast amount of thermal energy available in the deep cold waters of Lake Ohrid. These pans were approved in the Fall of 2008, and the first Rector was appointed at the suggestion of Professor Bock: Prof. Dr. Blagoja Samakoski. After assuring the stability and growing success of UIST during the first two years of its existence, after giving eight months notice, in July 2011 Rector Samakoski resigned to return to his industrial career.

However, as is unfortunately often the case with insecure and unstable emerging democracies, corrupt officials in the Macedonian government took this opportunity to replace the Professor Samakoski and his staff with corrupt Macedonian academicians who have committed frequent and serious plagiarism during their academic careers, as well as flagrant academic misconduct at UIST since their appointment in August 2011. The students have suffered terribly under this oppressive and corrupt administration, the Macedonian government did nothing to remediate the situation, even though comprehensive evidence of these offenses was published repeatedly in the public press in Macedonia. Potential foreign students and academicians should investigate the current state of affairs at UIST carefully before seeking admission or a faculty position.

Professor Bock retired from GWU on 31 May 2011. Nevertheless, he expects to continue his career as a guest lecturer in a variety of venues in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, as well as continue his research and professional activity as a consultant and mentor in his fields of expertise: Statistical Learning, Cognitive Science, and Research Methods. His primary research objective has remained unchanged for 40 years: the design and creation of an artificially intelligent being (already named Mada) whose cognitive and emotional capabilities are on a par with humans. He fully expects this objective to be achieved within the next 20 years. He anticipates this event with both excitement and trepidation.