Jehoshua Bruck

Why does the functioning of biological systems seem miraculous? One reason is that we do not know how to design systems that do what cells do, namely molecular computing. In contrast, we know how to design highly complex information systems. The fundamental reason for the successful evolution of information systems is the development of mathematical abstractions that enable efficient and robust design processes. In particular, Claude Shannon in his classical 1938 Master Thesis demonstrated that all Boolean functions can be computed by relay circuits, leading to the development of digital logic and resulting in computer chips with over a billion transistors. Motivated by the challenge of analyzing stochastic gene regulatory networks, we generalize the notion of logic design to probabilistic logic design. Specifically, we consider relay circuits where deterministic switches are replaced by probabilistic switches and present efficient algorithms for synthesizing networks that compute probability distributions.

Bio:  Jehoshua (Shuki) Bruck is the Gordon and Betty Moore Professor of Computation and Neural Systems and Electrical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology.  He received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, in 1982 and 1985, respectively and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1989. Dr. Bruck’s research focuses on information theory and systems and the theory computation in biological networks. His extensive industrial experience includes working for IBM Research as well as cofounding and serving as chairman of Rainfinity (acquired in 2005 by EMC) and XtremIO.

Dr. Bruck is a Fellow of the IEEE, a recipient of the Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching, the IEEE Schelkunoff Award, a Sloan Research Fellowship, a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, an IBM Outstanding Innovation Award and an IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award.