[sebastianmarkow]

Hawkings was the PI at the Redwood Neuroscience Institute. Which is now part of Berkeley. He is not an outsider (15+ years of research). You could argue though, that Numenta is more focused on bringing these methods to market, then solely doing research. I get that this doesn't always resonate well with people in academia.

[KingMob]

Are you sure he was actually a PI, and not just a funder? According to their list of publications (http://redwood.berkeley.edu/wiki/Publications), Hawkins is not an author on any of them. He's also not listed on the "People" page (http://redwood.berkeley.edu/wiki/People_at_the_Redwood_Cente...), even as an alumnus.