Charles Higgins is an Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience with a joint appointment in Electrical Engineering at the University of Arizona, which he joined in 1999. Though he started his career as an electrical engineer receiving his PhD from Caltech in 1993) his fascination with the natural world has led him to study insect vision and visual processing, and to try to meld together the worlds of robotics and biology. His research encompasses areas including software simulations of brain circuits, human sleep, models of cognition, and interfacing live insect brains with robots, but his driving interest continues to be building truly intelligent machines.