IF YOU GO:

Who: Ken Ford, founder and CEO of the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in Pensacola, Fla. What: El Pomar Institute for Innovation and Commercialization Nights Dinner When: 5:30 p.m. Tuesday Where: Upper Lodge at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs RSVP: by 8 a.m. Monday to bwasinge@uccs.edu

An expert in artificial intelligence who is CEO of the Institute for Human & Machine Cognition in Pensacola, Fla., will discuss the institutes research and human-centered computing during the EPIIC Nights dinner at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs Upper Lodge.

Ken Ford founded the institute on the campus of the University of West Florida in 1990. The institute became an independent, statewide not-for-profit research organization of the Florida University System and is affiliated with Florida Atlantic University, Florida Institute of Technology, the University of Central Florida and the University of West Florida. The organization employs about 100 people in Pensacola and a branch in Ocala and pioneers technologies aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities, according to its website.

Ford has written hundreds of scientific papers and six books on his research in artificial intelligence, cognitive science, human-centered computing and entrepreneurship in government and academia. He received a doctoral degree in computer science from Tulane University. Ford directed a new Center of Excellence in Information Technology at the Ames Research Center in California for the National Aerospace and Aeronautics Administration for two years in the late 1990s before returning to the institute.

He was named to the National Science Board in 2002, the Air Force Science Advisory Board in 2005, the NASA Advisory Council in 2008 and the Defense Science Board earlier this year.

The dinner is sponsored by the El Pomar Institute for Innovation and Commercialization. Michael Larson, the El Pomar chair of engineering and innovation and associate vice chancellor of research at UCCS, invited Ford to speak; Larson hopes to expand research activities at UCCS by adapting the model Ford used to start and expand the Florida institute. He said Fords speech will have broad application to work done in the Springs by the U.S. Space Foundation as well as local aerospace and defense contractors. Contact Wayne Heilman: 636-0234 Twitter @wayneheilman Facebook Wayne Heilman

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Expert on artificial intelligence to speak at EPIIC Nights dinner