Computational Learning and Memory Group

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Máté Lengyel is a reader (equiv. US associate professor) in computational neuroscience at the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge. Previously, he studied biology for his MSc and neurobiology for his PhD at Eötvös University, Budapest, while working in the computational neuroscience lab of Péter Érdi. He was then a postdoc with Peter Dayan at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, UCL, followed by a visiting research fellowship at the Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study. He studies learning and memory from computational, algorithmic/representational and neurobiological viewpoints. He also maintains an active interest in the possible computational functions of neural oscillations, particularly those present in the hippocampus and neocortex.

Cristina Savin joined the group as a postdoc in 2010. Previously, she had studied Computer Science at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, and did her PhD in the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies with Jochen Triesch. She is interested in how different plasticity mechanisms interact to achieve interesting computation in neural circuits.

Balázs Ujfalussy joined the group as a postdoc in 2011. Previously, he had studied biology and neurobiology for his MSc and PhD at Eötvös University while working in the computational neuroscience lab of Péter Érdi. He is interested in normative models of dendritic processing.

Sina Tootoonian joined the group as a postdoc in 2012. He did his PhD on data analysis and modeling of the locust olfactory system in the lab of Gilles Laurent at Caltech and at the MPI for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany. He is interested in normative models of olfactory processing.

Guillaume Hennequin joined the group as a postdoc in 2012 on a fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation. He holds a PhD in computational neuroscience from the EPFL where he studied in the lab of Wulfram Gerstner. Guillaume is interested in the dynamics of balanced cortical circuits, and how these support complex computations. He also maintains an active interest in synaptic plasticity.

Johannes Friedrich joined the group as a postdoc in 2013 on a fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation. He obtained his PhD at the University of Bern where he studied in the computational neuroscience lab of Walter Senn. Previously, Johannes had studied physics at the Universities of Würzburg and Toronto. His current interests are in normative models of decision making in the face of uncertainty and the underlying mechanisms of synaptic plasticity.

Emil Hewage joined the group as a PhD student in 2011 after having obtained an MEng at the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge.

Dylan Festa joined the group as a PhD student in 2012 after having obtained a Masters in Physics at the University of Pisa and worked as an Erasmus Scholar in Fred Wolf's Theoretical Neuroscience group at the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen.

Yan Wu joined the group as a PhD student in 2012. He has obtained a MASc at the the University of Waterloo (with Chris Eliasmith and Matthijs van der Meer) and BEng in Software Engineering at Wuhan University (with Hengjin Cai). He is interested in learning and memory.

Affiliated

Neil Houlsby joined CBL in 2010 as a PhD student on a Google Europe Fellowship in Statistical Machine Learning after having obtained an MEng at the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge. He is co-supervised by Zoubin Ghahramani and Máté Lengyel. He is currently working on the theory and application of Bayesian active learning.

Alumni

Gergő Orbán, MSc, PhD (1998-2008), postdoc (Marie Curie Intra-European Fellow) (2010-2012)
currently group leader at Wigner Institute, Budapest, on a Momentum grant from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Jean-Pascal Pfister, postdoc (2008-2010)
currently group leader at the Department of Physiology, University of Bern, on an Ambizione grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation

DJ Strouse, MSc (Churchill Scholar) (2011-2012)
currently PhD student at Princeton with Bill Bialek

Ferenc Huszár, MSc (2007-2009)
currently senior data scientist at PeerIndex

Collaborators

Richard Aslin, Dept Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Center for Visual Science, U Rochester
human psychophysics

Peter Dayan, Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, UCL
computational theory

József Fiser, Dept Psychology, Volen Center for Complex Systems, Brandeis U
human psychophysics, in vivo ferret multiunit electriophysiology

Boris Gutkin, Group for Neural Theory, ENS
biophysical theory

Michael Häusser and Tiago Branco, Wolfson Inst for Biomedical Research, UCL
dendritic processing

Judit Makara, Lab of Neuronal Signaling, Inst Experimental Medicine, Hun Acad Sci
in vitro dendritic processing

Ole Paulsen, Dept Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, U Cambridge
in vitro rat and mouse hippocampal and cortical circuit electrophysiology

Hugo Spiers, Dept Cognitive, Perceptual and Brain Sciences, UCL
human navigation, fMRI

Daniel Wolpert, Dept Engineering, U Cambridge
human psychophsyics, motor control