*SEE BELOW FOR PAST LAB MEMBERS.
Current group members (September 2024):
POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS
Kamyar Tavakoli: separation of signals in multi-delay neural nets; modeling myelin dynamics in epilepsy
GRADUATE STUDENTS
Ben Barlow (PhD physics - co-sup Joos): effect of NaV channel segregation and mild traumatic injury on action potential generation
Grégoire Berger-Malette (PhD physics – co-sup Jérémie Lefebvre) : modeling
activity-dependent myelination and delays.
Nicolas Brodeur (PhD physics - co-sup Seely): entropy production in exercise, disease and across the life span
Raphael Lafond-Mercier (PhD physics): adaptation dynamics and sequence memory
Aidan Minto (MSc physics
– co-sup Jérémie Lefebvre): synchronization of
rhythm bursts
Desiree Rehel (PhD physics): models of pattern
separation in hippocampus
Alexandre René (PhD physics
- co-sup. Jakob Macke, U. Tuebingen):
neurodynamical model inference and selection
Nicolas Rochette (MSc physics) Spatiotemporal dynamics of AIS-driven backpropagation.
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
Thomas Delev (summer 2017), Olivia Ellis (2018), Colin Porter (2020), Alison Riddoch (2021), Sa’Ad Abdisalam (2023,2024), Mathias Roman (2023), Hilaire Zogo (2024)
RESEARCH ASSOCIATES
Nicolas Bent (Sept. 2015 - August 2016)
At the University of Ottawa, I have close collaborations with experimental neuroscientists Len Maler, Jean-Claude Béique and Katalin Toth (Cellular Molecular Medicine), John Lewis (Biology), as well as clinicians Andrew Seely and Adam Sachs (The Ottawa Hospital) and Georg Northoff (Royal Ottawa Hospital) and kinesiologist Glen Kenny (uOttawa). We co-supervise graduate students and postdocs, and have regular joint group meetings.
The neuroscience questions motivate much of our work in nonlinear dynamics (including chaos theory), stochastic dynamics (part of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics), and nonlinear time series analysis. For example, we develop theories to understand and predict the activity of the multiple neural feedback loops that form the brain, and the role they play in attention, memory, novelty detection, prediction, generalization etc.... We also look at the dysregulation of neural activity in various diseases such as multiple sclerosis and neuropathic pain. Machine learning approaches, e.g. to infer circuitry and dynamics from microscopic spike train or imaging data, provide a useful toolbox for part of this research.
The close interaction between experiment and theory that these collaborations enable are the hallmark of the Center for Neural Dynamics founded in 2004, which I co-direct and in which there are a total of seven theorists (Naud, Thivierge, Joos, Lefebvre, Perkins, Leblanc and Longtin) and others with computational modeling expertise (Bui and Lewis). This makes for a vibrant research and training environment unique in Canada.
The nervous system of weakly electric fish studied in the Maler and Lewis groups, as well as the mouse hippocampus, brainstem and prefrontal cortex areas in the Béique, Maler and Toth labs, are ideal preparations to investigate the physical principles of biological information processing. We study questions about neural coding (the elusive language of the brain ! ), active sensing, physics at the limit of sensory detection, the role of feedback and its modulation in sensory information processing, memory formation and machine interfacing with brain activity. Neurophotonic, including optogenetic, as well as electrophysiological and imaging approaches are combined to understand brain mechanisms from synaptic plasticity to molecular psychiatry.
Modeling work in my collaboration with Northoff addresses the spatiotemporal dynamics of brain resting state activity, stimulus-evoked response and rhythms measured through different modalities (fMRI, EEG,...), and their alteration in psychiatric illness.
My collaboration with Andrew Seely, a thoracic surgeon with a physics background, revolves around the application of tools from statistical mechanics, nonlinear dynamics and complexity theory to single and multiple organ dysfunction, tumor energetics and physiological entropy production.
Collaboration with Adam Sachs uses recordings from human basal ganglia acquired during DBS surgery and modeling pathological brain rhythms.
I also have a number of national and international collaborations in systems, computational and theoretical neuroscience, nonlinear dynamics and neural machine learning/AI.
PAST LAB MEMBERS (from distant past to recent past)
Graduate Students (many co-supervised with Maler):
Boualem Mensour (PhD physics) (staff researcher, Radiology, Centre
Hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal)
Daniel Racicot (MSc physics) (staff researcher, Telesat Canada, Ottawa)
Martin St-Hilaire (MSc physics) (industrial physicist, Ottawa)
Steve Guillouzic (PhD physics) (data modeling, Dept. of Defense, Ottawa)
Brian Redmond (MSc physics) (science instructor, Grand Prairie Regional College, Alberta)
David Babineau (MSc physics) (industrial biophysicist, Ottawa)
Maurice Chacron (MSc transfer PhD physics) (now faculty, Physiology, cross-appt. to Physics, McGill)
Brent Doiron (MSc transfer PhD physics) (now faculty, Neuroscience and Mathematics, U. Chicago)
Jason Middleton (PhD physics) (now faculty, Louisiana State U Health Sciences Centre, Neurosciences, New Orleans)
Connie Sutherland (MSc physics) (industrial scientist, Ottawa)
Jakub Cieniak (MSc physics) (industrial scientist, Ottawa)
Brian Heffernan (MSc Systems Science) (PhD candidate, Auditory science, U. Ottawa)
Jason Boulet (MSc physics) (PhD candidate, electrical engineering, McMaster U)
Jérémie Lefebvre (MSc transfer PhD physics) (assistant professor, Biology+Physics, U. Ottawa)
Kieran Bol (MSc physics) (now in financial mathematics)
Dave Houtman (MSc physics) (now teacher at Algonquin College)
Andrea Bravi (PhD Neuroscience) (now data analyst at Apple UK)
James J. Jun (MSc transfer PhD physics) (Facebook Reality Labs, California)
Charles Garfinkle (MSc. physics) (now PhD candidate UC Berkeley)
Alexandre Iolov (PhD mathematics) (stochastic financial modeling, Copenhagen)
Alexandre Payeur (PhD physics) (now postdoc at MILA)
Mathieu
Lachance (MSc physics)
(CEGEP professor at Collège de l'Outaouais)
Alexandre René (MSc physics) (now PhD student in my group in collaboration with Jakob Macke in Bonn)
Ahmed Rezk (MSc physics 2022): machine learning approach for classifying the impact of demyelination (now high-school teacher, Ottawa)
Alexandre Mélanson (PhD physics 2019) (now limited term professor, U. Moncton Physics)
Stephen Clarke (PhD Neuroscience 2017, co-sup. Maler) (now postdoc at Stanford)
Arthur Powanwe (PhD physics 2020) (now postdoc at Western University)
Kamyar Seyed Tavakoli (PhD physics 2023) (now postdoc with Jérémie Lefebvre and me)
Postdoctoral Fellows (many co-supervised with Maler):
Carlo Laing (now faculty, Mathematics, Massey University, New Zealand)
Benjamin Lindner (now faculty, Physics, Humboldt University Berlin)
Jan Benda (now faculty, Biology, University of Tübingen)
Maurice Chacron (now faculty, Physiology (cross-appt to physics), McGill University)
Jason Middleton (now faculty, LSU Health Sciences Centre, New Orleans)
Krisztina Szalisznyo (KFKI of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences)
Axel Hutt (Directeur de
Recherche, INRIA, Nancy)
Na Yu (now faculty, Mathematics department, Ryerson University)
Reza Khanbabaie (BCI company Cognixion in Toronto)
Gary Marsat (now faculty, Biology, U. West Virginia)
Will Nesse (now lecturer at U. Utah Mathematics)
Jorge Mejias (associate prof. at U. Amsterdam)
Sara Nicola Jung (now postdoc at U. Bielefeld)
Richard Naud (associate professor, Faculty of Medicine, U. Ottawa)
Gregory Dumont (now Chef d’Équipe, NeuroRestore : EPFL-CHUV, Lausanne)
Belen SanCristobal (now faculty, ELISAVA/U. Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona)
Wilhelm Braun (now postdoc with Claus Hildetag, U. Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf)
Alexandre Payeur (now postdoc at MILA, U. Montreal)
Avner Wallach (main supervisor Maler): now faculty in Biology at Technion
Mauricio Girardi-Schappo (now assistant professor of Physics, Departamento de Física - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina – Florianópolis, Brazil)
Research Associates:
Jinli Xie (China Scholarship Council exchange)
Nicolas Rodwell Bent
Julie Goulet (short-term postdoctoral visit; now postdoc at U. Bonn)
Greg Barrie (DRDC Ottawa)
Marc Colette
Daniel Brabant (Photonics Research Center, U. Quebec en Outaouais and Optiwave Systems)
Diego Bueti (physics teacher)
Katarzyna Bzymek