Kevin Warwick

Kevin is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of The Institution of Engineering & Technology. He is the youngest person to become a Fellow of the City & Guilds of London Institute, and is author or co-author of more than 500 research papers, 27 books, and magazine and newspaper articles.

Born in Coventry, Kevin left school at 16 to work for BT. At 22 he took his first degree at Aston University, followed by a PhD and a research post at Imperial College, London. He subsequently held positions at Oxford, Newcastle and Warwick universities before being offered the Chair at Reading, at the age of 33.

Kevin instigated a series of pioneering experiments involving the neuro-surgical implantation of a device into the median nerves of his left arm in order to link his nervous system directly to a computer to assess the latest technology for use with the disabled. The development of the implant technology was used to perform ground-breaking research.

Kevin was successful with the first extra-sensory (ultrasonic) input for a human, and with the first purely electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans. His research has been discussed by the US White House Presidential Council on BioEthics, The European Commission FTP and led to him being widely referenced and featured in academic circles as well as appearing as cover stories in several magazines.

The Institute of Physics selected Kevin as one of only 7 eminent scientists to illustrate the ethical impact their scientific work can have - the others were Galileo, Einstein, Curie, Nobel, Oppenheimer and Rotblat.

Kevin was responsible for Cybot, a robot exported around the world as part of a magazine “Real Robots” – the royalties totalled over £1M for Reading University. Robots designed and constructed by Kevin’s group are on permanent interactive display in the Science Museums in London, Birmingham and Linz.

Kevin’s most recent research involves using intelligent computer methods to predict the onset of Parkinsonian tremors such that they can be stopped by means of a deep brain implant. This work was hailed in the Mail on Sunday as “the most significant recent advance in biomedical engineering”.

He currently leads an ongoing project in which a cultured neural network (using biological neurons) is trained to control a mobile robot platform. This work, which was reported on in a New Scientist feature article, is being used as an exercise for school science studies in the UK. A Youtube video of this research has had over 1.5 million views.

Kevin’s research has featured in many TV documentaries, e.g. Inventions that changed the world, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Future Scope and The Making of I Robot. He has appeared on Tomorrow’s World, in Time magazine, Newsweek and was selected by Channel 4 as one of the Top 6 UK Scientists for their 2001 series “Living Science”. In 2002 he was chosen by the IEE as one of the top 10 UK Electrical Engineers. Kevin also appeared as one of 30 "great minds of the future" in the book Predictions. His research was used by National Geographic International for a documentary called “I,Human” in 2006.

Speaking Topics

Kevin Warwick is Professor of Cybernetics, and an accomplished keynote speaker on technology and innovation.

• Futurist
• Science and technology
• Internet
• Innovation

For further information or to book Kevin Warwick, call us on +44 (0) 20 8365 3200 or email info@speakerscorner.co.uk