Abstract: The concept of reverse time diffusions is introduced by briefly outlining two applications, one in signal processing and the other in AI. Then with the aid of concrete examples of simple electrical circuits, reverse time diffusions are introduced, including their construction from a conventional forward time diffusion. The application to AI generation of images is presented in more detail, and then recent results on the generation of reverse time discrete-time diffusions are described.

Biography: Brian D. O Anderson was born in Sydney, Australia, and educated at Sydney University in mathematics and electrical engineering, with PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University. He worked in industry in Mountain View California and as a junior faculty member at Stanford University before joining the University of Newcastle as department head of Electrical Engineering. He was appointed as the first engineering professor at the Australian National University in 1981, retired as Distinguished Professor in 2016, and is now an Emeritus Professor. His awards include the IFAC Quazza Medal of 1999, the IEEE Control Systems Award of 1997, the 2001 IEEE James H Mulligan, Jr Education Medal, and the Bode Prize of the IEEE Control System Society in 1992, as well as several IEEE and other best paper prizes. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, the Royal Society, and a foreign member of the US National Academy of Engineering. He holds honorary doctorates from a number of universities, including Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, and ETH, Zürich and is an honorary professor of Zheijiang University, Harbin Institute of Technology and Shandong University. He is a past president of the International Federation of Automatic Control and the Australian Academy of Science. His current research interests are in distributed control and localization, nonlinear control, and social networks. He also served as a director on company boards, including the world’s major supplier of cochlear implants, Cochlear Ltd, and as an advisor to government, including membership of the Prime Minister’s Science Council under three prime ministers. He holds national awards from both Japan and Australia.