Profile of Dirk Apel

I am 36 and work at a large Bank in Germany as 'Head of IT for Global Financial Markets'. I worked five years in London at an American Investment Bank as a Vice President. In my spare time I read a lot about Artificial Intelligence, Psychology, Linguistics, and Neurology. I have planned to write a ph.d. about a topic related to neuronal networks. For this I have decided to first read ~8 books about artificial intelligence during my first self defined 'semester'. In my second semester I have planned to focus on books about neuronal networks. At the beginning of the third semester I want to know what topic I want to write about, and am going to search for a professor who shares my enthusiasm about Neuronal Networks and Artificial Intelligence. Possible topics I have been thinking of to write about so far are: speech development of children and modelling as neuronal networks, modelling of brain diseases, internet agents for neuronal processing of textual information from the web.