Misha Mahowald

Michelle Anne Mahowald (January 12, 1963 – December 26, 1996) was an American computational neuroscientist in the emerging field of neuromorphic engineering. In 1996 she was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame for her development of the Silicon Eye and other computational systems. She died by suicide at age 33.
Early life and education.
Mahowald, known as Misha, was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, daughter of Alfred and Joan Fischer Mahowald. She had a younger sister, Sheila.
After graduating high school, she attended the California Institute of Technology, graduating with a degree in biology in 1985. She continued at Caltech as a PhD student in Computation and Neural Systems under the supervision of Professor Carver Mead, a specialist in VLSI. For her thesis, Mahowald created her own project by combining the fields of biology, computer science, and electrical engineering, to produce the silicon retina.
Career.
The silicon retina used analog electrical circuits to mimic the biological functions of rod cells, cone cells, and other non-photoreceptive cells in the retina of the eye. The invention was not only highly original and potentially useful as a device for restoring sight to the blind, but it was also one of the most eclectic feats of electrical and biological engineering of the time. This remarkable example of engineering earned Mahowald a well-deserved reputation as one of the most famous female engineers of her age. Her work has been considered "the best attempt to date" to develop a stereoscopic vision system. She was awarded a doctorate in computational neuroscience in 1992, and her invention of the silicon retina and the silicon neuron earned her articles in the prestigious scientific journals "Scientific American" and "Nature", as well as four patents and the Clauser Prize for her dissertation. A revised version of her dissertation was subsequently published in book form.
Mahowald then re-located to the University of Oxford for one year to do a post-doctoral fellowship with eminent neuroscientists Kevan Martin and Rodney Douglas. After the completion of this project, Mahowald moved to Zürich to help found the Institute of Neuroinformatics (Institut für Neuroinformatik) at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, a research institution whose mission is to discover the key principles by which brains work and to implement these in artificial systems that interact intelligently with the real world.
In 1996, she was made a member of the Women in Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame.
Mahowald died in Zürich at the end of 1996, taking her own life at the age of 33.
Aspects of her work and personal life have been described in a book about the creation of the vision sensor company Foveon.
Award.
The "Misha Mahowald Prize for Neuromorphic Engineering" was created to recognize outstanding achievements in the field of neuromorphic engineering and was first awarded in 2016.
Publications.
The following is a list of Misha Mahowald's scientific publications from 1989 onwards. Her name continued to appear on publications after her death in recognition of the strong contributions she had made to those works while still alive.