NOW a London resident, Muswellbrook-raised David Budden returned to town this month to visit family.
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And, they are a family very proud of his achievements in Australia, and abroad.
After receiving his PhD in engineering in Melbourne a few weeks prior, Mr Budden visited his childhood town.
“I grew up in Muswellbrook and left when I was 18 to go to university,” he said.
“I did my undergraduate degree in Newcastle for five years, then I moved to Melbourne to do my PhD.
“My undergraduate degree was in engineering and computer science; my PhD was in computational biology.”
Mr Budden spent about three years doing breast cancer research from a data-driven perspective; developing algorithms and programs to analyse medical data.
“I felt that a PhD in this field was a really good opportunity to take a lot of the theoretical content that we’d learnt in the undergraduate degree and apply it to something that was such an important real world problem,” he said.
“Working with medical data for a particular illness that affects a lot of people and a lot of lives is obviously quite rewarding, to feel you’re making a contribution in that type of domain.”
Following his PhD work, Mr Budden spent a year in the United States, working as a post-doctoral researcher at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“I was doing a lot of artificial intelligence research while I was there,” he said.
“At the end of that I moved to London to take up a full-time job in research.
“So now I work at DeepMind, which is a Google-owned AI (Artificial Intelligence) research company.
“The work we’re doing now is in general AI.
“Essentially we’re trying to write intelligent programs that can sort of emulate human intelligence, but generally, not in a narrow domain.
“[We’re working on] something that would be capable of communicating and general problem solving, as well as people can.
“I guess what’s really attracted me to AI now as a field is the potential for a very sweeping impact.
“I suppose the goal of the company is that if you can solve intelligence as a problem, then everything else just comes by extension.
“So if you can make a program, or some software, or a machine, whatever it may be, that’s generally as intelligent as a human and as capable as a human, then you sort of shift the burden of solving problems back onto that.
“So, really, solving AI is on the critical path to solving any other problem.
“Some people think that general AI is five years away, some people think it’s ten, some people think it’s an impossibility and won’t ever happen.
“I think what’s important though is that in the short term, that we manage to find real world application and continue to make positive impact with the work that we’re doing and that’s certainly one of our focuses as well.”
A lot of Mr Budden’s current work deals with hospitals, and trying to provide a better and more streamlined treatment of patients.
He also believes there are many other opportunities for AI to help in areas like the electricity industry, aiming to reduce inefficiencies in energy transmission.
During his recent visit to town, the former Muswellbrook High School student was able to reflect on his time in the area.
“Muswellbrook is a great town,” he said.
“It was a really good place to grow up.
“I have really good memories here.
“I have a lot of good friends and all of my family is still here and they've been here quite a while .
“It’s always lovely to come back and see how the town’s growing, what people are doing, how things have changed, how things have stayed the same.
“I wouldn’t swap my childhood for anything – it was a great time here.”