idw – Informationsdienst Wissenschaft
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
idw - Informationsdienst
Wissenschaft
From the early days of 3D face recognition to great entrepreneurial and academic successes, engineer and computer scientist Alex Bronstein is no stranger to groundbreaking innovations. His path has meandered between academia at Technion, Israel, and industry at Intel as principal engineer to find research applications that better the world. The new Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) professor wants to advance machine learning for life sciences applications and beyond science—including AI in music.
Alex Bronstein’s research revolves around theoretical and practical aspects of machine vision and learning. He views his various interests as synergistic and finds mutual enrichment in the academic research and tech industry sectors. Now, he has joined the faculty of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), complementing its interdisciplinary character.
A career both in research and industry
In the early 2000s, Bronstein and his identical twin brother, Michael Bronstein, ventured into making face recognition fully three-dimensional. They built their own cameras based on structured light. In 2012, they sold their 3D sensor technology to Intel. Alex Bronstein joined the company as Principal Engineer to develop this technology further under the RealSense brand.
Bronstein headed the Center for Intelligent Systems at the Technion in Israel while leading his research group in parallel. He promotes mutual learning, symmetrical interactions, and freedom of exploration and tries to help his group members thrive in a creatively stimulating environment. At ISTA, Bronstein was a Visiting Professor for a year before joining the Institute’s faculty. He finds vibrant minds open to cross-domain collaborations beyond traditional discipline boundaries and appreciates how quick and agile the ISTA and xista innovation ecosystem is.
“To me, ISTA feels like a startup. It is a real example of how science should be done in the 21st century, a place that fosters cross-pollination and thinking outside the box. This year’s Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry, awarded to machine learning technologies enabling scientific discovery, beautifully illustrate this idea,” he says.
The plans for the Bronstein group and Austria’s AI research
Now, Bronstein wants to push the boundaries of machine learning for applications in the life sciences. At ISTA, he aims to help create strategic directions toward structural and cell biology applications, as well as toward single-cell biology and the various “omics” fields. Bronstein’s work will inform ML-friendly experimental design and data collection strategies.
According to Bronstein, one of Austria’s strengths as a location for AI research is the growing investment in ML research toward various applications. “By investing in bringing in talented people, I can see Austria becoming a center of excellence for AI in science, and perhaps one of the world’s leading locations in five years,” says Alex Bronstein. His brother, Michael Bronstein, was recently named the Founding Director of AITHYRA, the new institute for AI and Biomedical Research in Vienna.
Exploring “beauty in all of its manifestations”
Bronstein has always had broad interests, which he also sought to cover in his work. These encompass music, photography, poetry, writing, painting, gastronomy, sailing, and finance. One avenue that intrigues him is understanding how to use live biofeedback of the audience’s perception during a musical performance. “All in all, I appreciate beauty in all of its manifestations, and that goes well beyond science,” he says.
https://ista.ac.at/en/news/high-tech-inventor-to-further-ml-in-science/ Interview with Alex Bronstein
https://ista.ac.at/en/research/bronstein-group/ Bronstein Research Group at ISTA
https://xista.com/ xista innovation
Engineer and Inventor Alex Bronstein joins the ISTA faculty. Bronstein wants to push the boundaries ...
© ISTA
Campus of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA)
© ISTA
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