Michael A. Arbib is University Professor Emeritus, Fletcher Jones Chair in Computer Science, and Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, Biological Sciences, and Psychology at the University of Southern California. He earned a B.Sc. (Hons) in Pure Mathematics from the University of Sydney in 1960 and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1963. After postdoctoral work with Rudolf Kalman and serving as assistant professor at Stanford University, Arbib became founding chairman of the Department of Computer and Information Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from 1970 to 1986. Joining USC in 1986, he founded and served as first director of the Center for Neural Engineering and contributed to the USC Brain Project on neuroinformatics. He also helped establish the Center for Systems Neuroscience, Cognitive Science Program, and Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics at UMass.

Arbib's primary research focuses on the coordination of perception and action, employing schema theory for analyses of brain function, human cognition, machine vision, and robotics, alongside neural network models informed by neuroscientific data from humans and monkeys. He advanced the Mirror System Hypothesis, linking language evolution and parity to mirror neurons for grasping, which accounts for the brain's aptitude for sign languages alongside speech. Recent endeavors include neuromorphic architecture—brains for buildings—and the ABLE Project integrating action, brain, language, and evolution. Author or editor of nearly 40 books, notable works include Brains, Machines and Mathematics (McGraw-Hill, 1964), Who Needs Emotions? The Brain Meets the Robot (with Jean-Marc Fellous, Oxford University Press, 2005), and From Action to Language via the Mirror System (Cambridge University Press, 2006). Highly cited publications feature Language within our Grasp (1998), Topics in Mathematical System Theory (1969), and Grasping Objects: The Cortical Mechanisms of Visuomotor Transformation (1995). His accolades encompass the IEEE Neural Networks Council Pioneer Award (1995), International Neural Network Society Helmholtz Prize (2009), American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow (2008), Gifford Lecturer (1983), and Rouse Ball Lecturer (2001). Arbib's interdisciplinary scholarship has profoundly impacted computational neuroscience, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and related fields.

Professional Email: arbib@usc.edu