Milestones

Prof. Yoram Baram of the Computer Science department at the Technion received the BSc degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Technion in 1972, the MSc degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT in 1974, and the PhD degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 1976. Specializing in modern control theory, his first journal publications addressed the interfaces between dynamical systems and information theory, on the one hand, and between finite parameter sets and consistent estimation, on the other. He spent the next two years working on airborne and marine control and navigation systems at the Analytic Sciences Corporation in Reading Massachusetts.

In 1978 he returned to Israel and joined Tel-Aviv University as a faculty member, and the Israel Aircraft Industry as a consultant. His academic activity, including research, teaching and graduate student supervision, was focused on different aspects of optimal, multi-faceted system theory, including consistent estimation, model discrimination and validation on finite parameter sets, error detection and distance minimization between different models. At the same time, he continued his research of multi-modal aircraft control within wide flight regimes. He was soon joined by Prof. Uri Shaked in the discovery of fundamentally significant concepts of minimal-order system state estimation. In 1983 he moved to the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa, where he continued to teach, supervise graduate students and conduct research in the advanced theory of control systems.

In 1985, Baram was invited by Profs. Heinz Erzberger and Dallas Denery of the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, where he spent two sabbatical terms, in 1986-1988 and in 1996-1998, as a Senior Research Associate of the US National Research Council, and the following 20 years as a consultant. During his first sabbatical term, he was invited by Professor Thomas Kailath of Stanford University for joint research, in which they discovered the fundamental concepts of Estimability and Regulability, which were previously unknown in control-theory. Before returning to Israel in 1988, Baram has found considerable interest in the newly emerging field of neural networks, and, consequently, taught the first courses in neural networks at the Technion.

Baram’s research and teaching during the years 1988-1998, including his second sabbatical term at NASA Ames, were devoted almost entirely to the concept of neural networks, addressing issues of memory capacity, vision, classification, pattern recognition, convergence, prediction, structure attraction, and trajectory selection. The latter concept, addressed by Baram’s 1996 paper titled “A bird’s eye view on the descent trajectory”, came as Baram’s response to a question raised to him by Prof. Denery: “How can a pilot distinguish a three-dimensional object on the ground from a two-dimensional marking (such as an oil stain) when descending for landing on a runway”? A simple, mathematically defined approach trajectory is shown in that paper to safely resolve that dilemma.

Returning to Israel from his second sabbatical term in 1998, Baram has devoted himself to the development of a portable virtual reality device for safe and effective motion by neurologically impaired patients. Baram’s preliminary work towards that goal was the first of only three works noted for their significance by the Evaluation Committee, appointed by the Technion President to assess the standing of the Faculty of Computer Science (“Profs. R. Karp, and A. Pnueli, winners of the Turing award, and Prof. R. E. Bryant: The Technion Faculty of Computer Science, Report of the Review Committee, submitted to the President of the Technion on May 7, 2000”).

The effectiveness of Baram’s device in assisting gait and eliminating freezing in Parkinson’s disease patients was demonstrated in collaborative studies with Prof. Judith Aharon-Peretz of the Technion Medical School, and published in 2001. The results were revealed in a platform presentation by Baram at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology, Philadelphia, 2001, a meeting attended by 12,000 neurologists from around the world. They were then widely publicized by world media.

The significance of Baram’s device was that, in contrast to previously proposed approaches to motion improvement by the neurologically impaired, which were based on open-loop, largely ineffective and dangerous to most patients as a result of error accumulation, gait entrainment by the closed-loop feedback device developed by Baram has, by virtue of feedback, an error correction effect, which protects the patient’s every step from stubble, diversion or fall.

In 2004 Baram was awarded a US patent (No. 6,734,834-B-1, “Closed-loop Augmented Reality Apparatus”) for his wearable virtual reality apparatus for gait improvement in neurological patients. In 2005 Baram received the Research Award for Best Platform Presentation in the leading conference on multiple sclerosis CMSC, following joint work with Prof. Ariel Miller of the Technion Medical school. This work was published in 2006 in the leading journal “Neurology”. In 2005, “Baram’s Proximity Measure – BPM”, which was first proposed in Baram’s 1976 PhD thesis, was noted at length by MIT Prof. Emeritus Michael Athans in his keynote lecture at the opening of the 2005 International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) World Congress in Prague, Czech Republic (IFAC Congress is held once in three years with over 3000 participants). The keynote lecture and the accompanying paper by Athans and his colleagues made extensive use of BPM, including a detailed Appendix and an acknowledgement.

In early 2006 Baram was appointed the incumbent of the Technion’s Roy Mattas/Winnipeg Chair in Biomedical Engineering. In midyear 2006, Baram was invited by Prof. Alberto Espay to spend a sabbatical at the University of Cincinnati Medical School, where they conducted preliminary studies on the effects of Baram’s sensory feedback device on gait in Parkinson’s patients. These studies were extended later into home-based device use, showing significant walking improvement, and maintaining long-term residual improvement as well. In 2007 Baram developed an auditory version of his device, producing a clicking sound at each step taken by the patient. The auditory device was first tested on patients with multiple sclerosis and found to produce similar gait improvement results as the visual feedback device.

The considerable advantage of the glide-symmetric tiles geometry over previously suggested perpendicular line geometry, has been argued and specifically measured and demonstrated in clinical experiments on multiple sclerosis patients. In 2010, the effectiveness of the wearable visual feedback device on the improvement of gait in adults with idiopathic senile gait and in patients after brain stroke was revealed in tests performed by Baram with Prof. Judith Aharon-Peretz of the Technion and Dr. Ruben Lenger of the Fliman Geriatric Hospital at old-age homes in Haifa. Of the 21 patients tested, 13 patients, showing above-median performance without the device, increased their walking speed and stride length considerably when using the device, while patients with below-median performance without the device did not improve their performance on average when walking with the device.

In 2012, Baram was joined by Dr. Ruben Lenger of ILAN – Israel Foundation for Handicapped Children, in testing the ability of such Children to walk safely with either the visual or the auditory virtual reality device on. The results in both cases, and residually 15 min after using either device, showed marked improvement in the walking abilities of most participants.

In 2013 Baram was invited by Prof. Virginia de Sa of UCSD, where they conducted EEG recordings and cortical analysis of a responding Parkinson’s patient walking with Baram’s sensory feedback device. Producing considerable visible interactions between cortical lobes, the results demonstrated considerably higher improvement with respect to that produced by a non-responding Parkinson’s patient.

Following an invitation of the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation, Baram has served as a panelist of the evaluation committees of research proposals in Computational Neurobiology held in Washington DC in March 9-10, 2015 and in March 9-10, 2020.

Baram was invited to give keynote lectures at the Second Pan-European multi-stakeholder colloquium on Multiple Sclerosis in Brussels on 15 May 2015, and at the 6th International Symposium on Gait and Balance in Multiple Sclerosis in Portland Oregon on 10 September 2016.

Since 2013, Baram has been mainly active in neuroscientific studies, investigating the correlation between brain functions and advanced mathematics. His works, employing such mathematical disciplines as chaos and global attractors, random graphs, prime numbers and quantum computation, have been published in leading neuroscience journals, and were summoned in a book: The Subcritical Brain: A Synergy of Segregated Neural Circuits in Memory, Cognition and Sensorimotor Control (World Scientific, 2021).

Recognizing the strong correlation between biological movement and control theory, Baram has written a second book: Motion Control: Multi-Faceted Movement in Space, Time and Neurological Impairment (World Scientific, 2023). In addition to the articles he published in leading professional journals, Baram has delivered a large number of lectures in leading professional conferences. He has supervised about thirty graduate students, and, until his retirement in 2015, has served as head of the Technion Center for Intelligent Systems.

The following  present certain recognitions of Baram’s works:

2004 US patent No. 6,734,834-B-1
“Closed-loop Augmented Reality Apparatus”

(c)

(a) Baram’s device: Box with microcomputer, motion sensor and image motion generator; portable display glasses and ear-phones
(b) Wearing the device
(c) Virtual tiled floor + superimposed patient steps

 

Plaque of Recognition

Following his lecture at the main annual conference on multiple sclerosis (CMSC – Conference of Multiple Sclerosis Centers) in Orlando Florida, Baram was awarded the “Research Award for the Best Platform Presentation in Research in Multiple Sclerosis” for “Effects of Virtual Reality Cues on Gait in Multiple Sclerosis Patients”. The plaque is displayed below:

 

Research Award Plaque

 

 

The following book, published in 2021, has received the subsequent promotions by leading scholars, displayed on its back cover

 

”The Subcritical Brain weaves together theoretical ideas from random graphs, nonlinear dynamics, prime numbers and quantum computation, to address one of the most important questions in science – how brains compute. A must read for anyone interested in theoretical studies of cortical
microcircuits.“

Dario Ringach, Professor of Neurobiology & Psychology,
David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles

”Baram’s main thesis is that weakly connected small neural circuits offer higher information processing capacities than large neural networks. Paraphrasing this message we may emphasize the importance of diversity in both the brain’s system of systems and the education of its researchers. Any reader who is fond of applied mathematics will be delighted to witness the author’s skillful use of advanced tools in investigating brain mechanisms and addressing issues of movement disorders in neurologically impaired patients.“

David Horn, Professor of Physics, Incumbent of the Edouard and Francoise Jaupart Chair of Theoretical Physics of Particles and Fields, Tel Aviv University

”Professor Yoram Baram has dared set one foot in the world of advanced mathematics and the other in the world of medical practice. In The Subcritical Brain, he creates a bridge between these two worlds that a reader can walk with both confidence and amazement. Neural Networks may have never been approached with such insight and lyricism.“

Alberto Espay, Professor of Neurology, University of Cincinnati

”All chapters are of high scientific and literal quality. Each chapter begins with a short mention of the behavioral-neuro-physiological process, continues with a presentation of the prevailing mathematical and theoretical approaches to the addressed subject and culminates in a detailed integrative analysis of the author’s insights and research results. The book is recommended to all those interested in translational science aiming to model the abilities of the human mind which is suitable to adapt to our ever-changing environment.“

Judith Aharon-Peretz, Professor of Neurology, Medical School, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

The following book, published in 2023, has received the subsequent promotions by leading scholars, displayed on its back cover:

 

“Following an exposition of systems and control theory foundations, Motion Control presents the author’s work with medical collaborators on human gait problems; this includes a presentation of their virtual reality feedback device for gait stabilization, in particular for those suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. Motion Control joins the author’s preceding monograph, The Subcritical Brain, to make a valuable contribution to the scientific and clinical area of human cybernetics.”

Peter E. Caines, FRSC, Distinguished James McGill Professor, Macdonald Chair in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University

“Professor Yoram Baram summons the best of probability and statistics to create a coherent framework for the understanding and modulation of critical motor behaviors, such as gait. Not for the faint of heart, this encyclopedic tour de force includes all nuts and bolts behind each argument from one of the most sophisticated computer scientists of our era.”

Alberto J. Espay, MD, MSc, FAAN, Professor of Neurology, Director and Endowed Chair, Gardner Family Center for Parkinson’s disease and Movement Disorders, University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center

“Professor Baram’s work has unveiled the very details of natural and artificial control processes, so as to completely understand them and put them to work. The end results, manifested by both solid mathematics and medical achievements, is unquestionably rewarding.”

Uri Shaked, Professor, Tel Aviv University, Fellow of the IEEE, Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Application (IMA), Winner of the 2017 Israel Prize for Engineering Research

“I spent a very pleasant time browsing through the book “Motion Control”. I was impressed with the thoroughness and the rigour of the presentation. The topic of the book is of great importance to the many people who suffer from motion disabilities”

Thomas Kailath, Hitachi America Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, Stanford University; Member: US National Academy of Engineering, US National Academy of Sciences, Recipient of the IEEE Medal of Honor and the US National Medal of Science.