Brief Biography
Jun Tani received the B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Waseda University, dual M.S. degrees in electrical engineering and mechanical engineering from University of Michigan and Dr. Eng. from Sophia University. He started his research career in Sony Computer Science Laboratory in 1990. He has been appointed as a team leader in Lab. for Behavior and Dynamic Cognition, Brain Science Institute, RIKEN in Tokyo since 2000 where he is currently leading 7 PostDocs. He was also appointed as a visiting associate professor in Univ. of Tokyo from 1997 to 2002. He has studied the problems of robot learning with theoretical modeling of complex adaptive systems and neuronal networks for more than 15 years. He has been also interested in phenomenological problems of "self-consciousness" and his studies have addressed those problems from the view of embodied cognition. Five years ago, he started neuroscience studies on behavior learning processes in real brains utilizing both scheme of human brain imaging and animal electrophysiology. His envision is to establish the "brain-inspired robotics" by integrating these approaches.