Profile

Dr Sunny Bains is a scientist, journalist, editor, podcaster, expert in technical communication, and author of Explaining the Future: How to Research, Analyze, and Report on Emerging Technologies (Oxford University Press, 2019). She is based in Edinburgh, Scotland, but currently teaches at UCL, where she has developed a programme to teach research, analysis, and communication skills to undergraduates and postgraduates across Engineering, Brain Sciences, and Physical Sciences, as well as leading specialist modules in technical journalism.

Sunny’s technical focus is neuromorphic engineering: the design of electronics based on structures in the brain. In September 2023 she launched the Brains & Machines podcast about neuromorphic engineering and bio-inspired technology, produced in conjunction with EETimes Current. She is also working on a book on the subject to come out in 2024. When she has the time, Sunny writes a column on the subject for EETimes and works on projects serving the neuromorphic technical community, including NeuroPAC, launched early in 2023.

For more than three decades, Sunny has worked as a journalist for magazines including The Economist, Science, Nature Electronics, New Scientist, and Wired. She also founded and edited many specialist publications, including Holographics International Magazine in the late 80s, Optical Computing, Robotics and Machine Perception, Nanotechnology, and SPIE Newsroom while working with SPIE (The International Society for Optics and Photonics) in the 1990s and early 2000s. Through her company Form & Content Media, she also helped create projects like The Neuromorphic Engineer, The Briefing, and ENGins (Engineering Inspiration).

Sunny has served on the Governance Committee of the National Association of Science Writers (US) and, twice, on the Executive Board of the Association of British Science Writers. In 2019 she was elected to serve as Secretary in the World Federation of Science Journalists, where she supervised many projects including WFSJ-Briefing, the Higher Education and Accreditation Working Group, and the Technology and Engineering Committee until she left to work on her new book in 2022.

Sunny has degrees in Physics (BSc), Journalism (MSc), and Physical Computation for Embodied Artificial Intelligence (PhD), and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Upcoming Appearances

June

Recent Appearances

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