Opportunities

To test the variety of probes under development, we need to initiate the robotically assisted surgery/probe insertion. This will require mechanical design skills, including familiarity with 3D printing and CAD tools to rapidly prototype fixtures to be used in conjunction with the surgery robot. We will collaborate with the lab of Dan O’Connor in the school of medicine as well as other faculty.

In collaboration with Adam Charles: Chronic recording of cells presumes the ability to track changes in the neural response of the same population of cells across long timescales, including through learning, adaptation, development, etc. State-of-the-art high-density probes enable unparalleled access to large populations of cells, however, their use in chronic recording depends on robust and accurate tracking of individual cells across sessions. We propose a project that aims to develop the data science methods that will enable such robust tracking via a framework that mixes geometrical and neural inferences to identify where cells are relative to a probe and what those cells are doing. The methods will hinge on a combination of signal processing and optimization techniques.