Professor Richard Mitchell

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IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics

A Personal Introduction

Originating from Sussex, I came to Reading in 1977 to read Cybernetics & Control Engineering. After a successful three years, I decided to stay on and do a PhD, with the wonderful title of 'Multimicroprocessor Control of Processes with Pure Time Delay'. Then a lectureship position became available, and so from 1983 I have been lecturing on various aspects of Cybernetics (though only recently has this been on any aspect of control engineering!)

My research interests are broad, including aspects of control, simulation, intelligence, learning and virtual reality. This has involved various types of neural network and, with the famous Cybernetics Robots, reinforcement learning using Fuzzy Automata. Much of my research has been funded via EPSRC, Industry and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (formerly Teaching Company Schemes). Apart from October 2001 to October 2002, where I spent a year on sabbatical at National Grid researching clustering methods, I have been lecturing at Reading since 1983.

In 2011 I was awarded a University Teaching Fellowship. In 2015 I was made Professor of Cybernetics.

On a personal level, I was married to Carol, who worked in the pharmaceutical industry, until her untimely death, but she bore me two lovely sons, Joshua and Jonathon. My hobbies include badminton, golf (very occasionally) reading, music and painting in either an oil or water colour style, and family tree research, for which I have written articles for the Sussex Family History Group.

Note, for those who have wondered about the odd character in the index of my pages: Professor Woolyface is a cartoon character I invented many years ago, and who has been on various cartoons in the departmental newsletter.