ProfessorNikola Kasabov

Professor Nikola (Nik) Kirilov Kasabov (also spelled legally as Kassabov) is Life Fellow of IEEE (Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers), Fellow of RSNZ (Royal Society of New Zealand), Fellow of the College of Fellows of INNS (International Neural Network Society), Distinguished Visiting Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering UK, Fellow of the NZ IITP (Institute for IT Professionals), Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association. He is the Founding Director of the Knowledge Engineering and Discovery Research Institute (KEDRI) and Professor Emeritus of Knowledge Engineering in the School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematical Sciences at AUT.

His main interests are in the areas of: computational intelligence; neuro-computing; bioinformatics; neuroinformatics; speech and image processing; data mining; knowledge representation and knowledge discovery.

He has published over 700 works, among them 320 journal papers, 10 text books, edited research books and monographs, conference papers, book chapters, edited conference proceedings, 28 patents and authorship certificates in the area of intelligent systems, neural networks, connectionist and hybrid connectionist systems, fuzzy systems, expert systems, speech and image recognition, neuroinformatics, bioinformatics, neuroengineering. He originated the first neuromorphic spatio-temporal data machine called NeuCube, implemented by his collaborators and used in the labs of 50 countries. He has also been included in the Stanford University's List of the Top 2% Scientists in the World by Citations since 2020.

He held a secondment positions as George Moore Chair/Professor at Ulster University UK (2020-2024) and at IIKT-Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (2022-2025). He has held Honorary and Visiting Professorships at the University of Auckland NZ, Teesside University UK, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Dalian University and Peking University, China, ETH/UniZurich. He was awarded Doctor Honoris Causa of Obuda University, Hungary. 

Professor Kasabov served as the President of the International Neural Network Society (INNS) (2009-2010), Asia-Pacific Neural Network Assembly (APNNA) (2008), Asia Pacific Neural Networks Society (2019) (APNNS).

Professor Kasabov is the Genera co- Chair of IJCNN2023, honorary chair of ICONIP2024 and a General Chair of a series of biannual international conferences on Neurocomputing and Evolving Intelligence in New Zealand. He received numerous awards, including: EU Marie Curie Fellowship (2011-2012); the INNS Ada Lovelace Meritorious Award (2019); the INNS Gabor Award (2012); The Bayer Science Innovator Award NZ (2007); The Royal Society of New Zealand Silver Medal (2001); the AUT Medal (2105); Honorary member of the Bulgarian Informatics Association AOKSIT (2018) and the Greek Computer Society (2014).

Professor Kasabov is the EiC of the Springer-Nature series of Bio-and Neurosystems and the journal Evolving Systems. He has served as Associate Editor of numerous international journals, including Neural Networks, Information Sciences, IEEE TrCDS. He has extensive academic experience at various academic and research organisations: University of Otago, New Zealand; University of Essex, UK; University of Trento, Italy; Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria; TU Kaiserslautern Germany; ETH Zurich; Shanghai Jiao Tong University; Ulster University UK, Technical University of Sofia. Professor Kasabov has Masters degrees in Computer Science and Engineering, and a PhD in Mathematical Sciences from the Technical University, Sofia, Bulgaria. He has supervised to completion 50+ PhD students.

Professor Kasabov is the Founding Director of Knowledgeengineering.ai. He has been appointed as Advisory Board member of Conscium.com, 

which is the world’s first applied AI consciousness research organisation with the aim to deepen our understanding of consciousness to pioneer efficient, intelligent, and safe AI that builds a better future for humanity.

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