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About myself
My background is in electronic and biomedical engineering. I hold the Bachelor of Engineering (First Class Honours) and PhD (Distinction) degrees from The University of Western Australia (UWA) and the Master of Applied Science degree from the University of Toronto in Canada. For many years, I worked at the Singapore General Hospital, and, for eleven years, headed its Biomedical Engineering Department. In 1999, I joined academia in Australia and have worked at three Western Australian universities: UWA, Murdoch University, and Curtin University of Technology. I am now an adjunct academic at the Centre for Intelligent Information Processing Systems (CIIPS) in the School of Electrical, Electronic,and Computer Engineering (EECE) at UWA.
My current research interests span two areas: human consciousness, and mathematical software. I am also working on a series of books designed to assist students in their learning and research.
Research interests
Human consciousness
Human consciousness is a vast subject. My specific interest is in transitional states of consciousness. Hypnagogia—the transitions between wakefulness and sleep and vice versa—are particularly promising in terms of their potential for enhancing human creativity. Everyone who falls asleep or wakes up passes through the hypnagogic state, albeit fleetingly. I am especially interested in the pioneering work of Steven Strogatz as exemplified in his monograph The Mathematical Structure of the Human Sleep-Wake Cycle. Lucid Dreaming is another transitional state that holds promise for enhancing human capabilities. I believe that it is possible to map the processes involved in booting up a computer with these transitional states and to evolve from them a rigorous mathematical framework for understanding and exploring human consciousness.
I have been and am fascinated by the mental abilities of Nikola Tesla, the electrical engineer, who invented the induction motor, among other things. Uncannily, Tesla had a virtual laboratory in his mind and conducted mental experiments on his ideas before committing a design to paper and prototyping it in the real world. I have written an article on Tesla's unusual mental abilities entitled Reflections on the Mind of Nikola Tesla. You may also download the PDF version. Understanding how Tesla functioned will assist in better harnessing human creativity.
Mathematical software
Some knowledge of mathematics is needed by almost anyone at high school or university, but not all are comfortable with the abstraction necessary for this. Audio-visual media can considerably enrich the experience of learning mathematics. I am engaged in using the excellent open source mathematical software, SAGE, for this purpose. The interplay between pictures and words—geometry and algebra—can be exploited to make mathematics more accessible to those whose bias lies in one or the other of these two domains. In addition, the time evolution of mathematical algorithms like the Sieve of Eratosthenes and Buffon's needle are well suited to computer simulation. My ultimate aim is to make available a mathematical toolbox or laboratory, based on SAGE, that any interested student with a PC or laptop can use to enhance and enrich the experience of learning mathematics.
Meta-education
I have coined the term meta-education to refer to the processes by which we learn, do research, write reports and theses, etc. While the content varies with discipline, the processes of learning, researching, and writing remain substantially the same across disciplines. It is possible to analyze these processes and distill techniques which will enhance performance in each of them. I am working on a series of books to assist students to achieve their full academic potential by applying tried and tested techniques for precisely this end.
As part of my work in meta-education, I have written a practical guide for students who need to write a thesis as part of their academic requirements. This document, How to Write a Thesis is also downloadable in PDF format.
Publications
Publications from my previous research interests are available on my publications page.
Other interests
My other interests include using TEX and its variants for electronically typesetting mathematical and other documents. I also enjoy using the Perl programming language. It is so fascinatingly rich and varied that programming in it is akin to writing in a natural language.
Contact details
The best way to contact me is to email me.
© R (Chandra) Chandrasekhar, January 2008
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