Last month, Dr. Donald C. Wunsch II, Mary Finley Missouri Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was recognized by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, commonly known as IEEE. Wunsch received the 2023 Computational Intelligence Society Neural Networks Pioneer Award for his fundamental contributions to the understanding and development of neural networks, computing systems inspired by neuroscience. Neural networks have applications that range from image processing and speech recognition to financial forecasting and medical diagnosis. In June, Wunsch was honored by IEEE at the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks in Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia.

Wunsch is also the founding director of the Kummer Institute Center for Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems and director of the Applied Computational Intelligence Laboratory. Wunsch is an IEEE Fellow, an International Neural Networks Society (INNS) Fellow and recipient of an NSF CAREER Award. Over his career, Wunsch has produced more than 500 publications, including 12 books.