Presentations

Why computational neuroscience?

If anything brain or computer-related tickles your fancy, this is the event to attend.

The debut event for Cape Town Intelligent Systems is sure to be a blast with a focus on Computational Neuroscience! Fear not, there shall be AI/computational techniques and applications as part of the talks too!

The seminar, titled “Computational Neuroscience: what it is and what students in Cape Town are doing with it” is hosted by the UCT Cortex Club (http://www.cortexclub.co.za).

It would be great to see some of you there, the speakers will be delighted to chat afterwards!

The talks are always interesting and there shall be a brief introduction to computational neuroscience too. These talks are not meant to be aimed at experts, as they are all varied in their focus and methodologies, but rather will be accessible to a broad audience. Also, don’t be afraid to ask questions before, during, or after a talk!

The speakers have backgrounds in computer science, neuroscience, mathematics, medicine, and (quantum) physics.

visit http://www.cortexclub.co.za for directions (new website coming soon). You may need to sign in at reception and they will help point you in the right direction to the venue. I will endeavour to let reception know outside guests are expected, just mention the talk’s title (and UCT Cortex Club).

Speaker Information:

Christopher Currin - Why computational neuroscience?

Chris is a PhD Neuroscience student in Joseph Raimondo’s lab at UCT. His work involves understanding the information processing principles and abilities that chloride - through inhibition - imbues to the functioning brain and in neurological disorders. He will be giving a short introductory talk on computational neuroscience and why it is important. ———————————————————————————-

Luke Taylor - Unsupervised Learning: How do machines learn by themselves

Luke is a final year Applied Maths and Computer Science undergraduate at UCT with a keen interest in Artificial Intelligence. The ability to recognise sensory information in invariant forms is in his mind one of the brain’s most powerful and interesting features. How it does this at a computational level is something that he aspires to grasp.

Lizelle Niit - Computational approaches to schizophrenia

Lizelle is a Masters student with Jonathan Shock in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at UCT. She is investigating the application of computational models to psychiatric disorders.

Ryan Sweke - Interpreting external stimuli via sparse coding

Ryan has just completed his Ph.D. in physics, with a focus on quantum computation and quantum information. He is currently getting ready to start a first post-doc, continuing this line of research, while trying his best to learn as much computational neuroscience as possible

Kira Düsterwald - Modelling chloride, anions and growth in dendrites

Kira is a medical student and aspiring clinician-scientist concurrently registered for a MSc (Neuroscience) at UCT. She completed the equivalent of an undergraduate mathematics major, and her work is strictly computational, focusing on chloride homeostasis and inhibition.