Dr William Edmondson

Dr William Edmondson

School of Computer Science
Honorary Senior Research Fellow

Contact details

Address
School of Computer Science
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

William Edmondson is a Cognitive Scientist with a wide-ranging set of interests in linguistics, human-computer interaction and SETI. His recent book – The Sequential Imperative, published by Brill (2017) – provides a synthetic summary of much of this work.  The conceptual focus is the Functional Specification of the brain, any brain.  And of course functional specifications are at the core of software engineering, especially the design of human-computer interactions.

Qualifications

  • MA. Theoretical Linguistics, 1986 (University of Essex);
  • PhD. Electrical Engineering / Psychology, 1974 (Imperial College);
  • BSc. Physics, 1968 (University of Surrey).

Biography

The first phase of Dr William Edmondson's career moved from a PhD in Electrical Engineering / Psychology (on the development of a vibrotactile speech training aid for the deaf) to work on sign language linguistics (and an MA in Theoretical Linguistics). The linguistics work overlapped with the next phase.

The second phase of his career focussed on teaching and research in Human-Computer Interaction, with involvement in teaching and research on Cognitive Science.  This work overlapped with the third phase.

 The third phase of his career, including movement into retirement from institutional employment, focussed on SETI (the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence).  This work continues. 

The most important publications in his career are the paper in Astrobiology in 2003, and the book on Cognitive Science published by Brill in 2017.  For details, please see Dr William Edmondson's profiles on Google Scholar and Academia.edu.

Publications

Please see the publication list of Dr William Edmondson via his Google Scholar Listing and Academia.edu profile.