Brain Networks

[Overview]   [Faculty]   [Projects]   [Courses]

The brain networks area focuses on building anatomically and physiologically accurate computer models of brain networks: from the brain?s component of neurons and their synaptic assembly into massive networks, to the simulation of the brain?s extraordinary computational power to represent complex natural environments. Behavior is built on architecture; and it is the architecture of the mouse brain network, as a template for all mammalian brains, that we predominantly study here. Charting the networks of the mammalian brain is one of the great voyages of discovery of our age. Disciplines evoked in the study of brain networks include high data-rate optical imaging, 3D reconstruction, geometric modeling and visualization, large-scale web-organized database systems, graph theory for elucidating basic circuits in the brain network, physiologically-realistic functional simulation, and the organization of perceptual, motor, and cognitive processing in brain networks. Research on brain networks has the potential to transform the way we think about computation.

Faculty

Nancy Amato   (Research Interests: Motion Planning, Robotics, Computational Geometry, Virtual Reality, Computational Biology/Chemistry, Parallel and Distributed Computing, Parallel Algorithms, Performance Modeling)

Jianer Chen   (Research Interests: Computational Optimization and Complexity, Graph Theory and Algorithms, Parallel Processing and Networking, Computer Graphics)

Yoonsuck Choe   (Neural Networks, Computational Neuroscience, Visual Perception, Autonomous Agents, Image Retrieval, and Artificial Intelligence)

Ricardo Gutierrez-Osuna   (Pattern Recognition, Intelligent Sensors, Machine Olfaction, Speech-driven Facial Animation, Biological Cybernetics, Mobile Robotics, Machine Learning)

Eun Jung Kim   (Computer Architecture, Power Efficient Systems, Parallel/Distributed Systems, Computer Networks, Cluster Computing, QoS Support in Cluster Networks and Internet, Performance Evaluation, and Fault-Tolerant Computing)

Bruce McCormick   (Brain Mapping, Computational Neuroscience, Neural Networks, Scientific Visualization and Modeling, Image Processing)

Lawrence Rauchwerger   (Parallelizing Compilers, Run-time Detection and Exploitation of Coarse Grained Parallelism, Architectures for Parallel Computers)

Projects

Three-dimensional microscopes, capable of processing teravoxels of image data per day, are beginning to opening up the internal connectivity of brains of all species to measurement and modeling of brain architecture at a neuronal level of detail. A first instrument, the Knife-Edge Scanning Microscope, has been designed and is now operational within the Department. This project plans to produce the first detailed submicron 3D map of brain microstructure for a whole mammalian brain, that of the C57BL/6J mouse.

Nancy Amato
Jianer Chen
Yoonsuck Choe
Ricardo Gutierrez-Osuna
John Keyser
Eun Jung Kim
Bruce McCormick
Lawrence Rauchwerger

Courses

CPSC 603. Database Systems and Applications.
CPSC 608. Database Systems.
CPSC 620. Computational Geometry.
CPSC 623. Parallel Geometric Computing.
CPSC 636. Neural Networks.
CPSC 641. Computer Graphics.
CPSC 644. Cortical Networks.
CPSC 645. Geometric Modeling.
CPSC 646. The Digital Image.
CPSC 647. Image Synthesis.
CPSC 669. Computational Optimization.
CPSC 689. Special Topics in Intelligent Neural Systems.