Special Session 14

SPECIAL SESSION #14

Volker Steuber

Professor of Computational Neuroscience, University of Hertfordshire, UK

• v.steuber@herts.ac.uk

Nada Yousif

Senior Lecturer in Biomedical Engineering, University of Hertfordshire, UK

• n.yousif@herts.ac.uk

Using mathematical, computational and physics-based approaches to understand the human brain in both health and disease is an expanding area of research. Through data driven computational modelling of the human brain, we can replicate neural activity at a variety of levels not only to understand neural computing but also to treat brain disorders. In addition, this understanding, and predicting the working of the nervous system, leads into the fast-developing area of neurotechnology and brain computer interfaces.

This session will present the latest research in the topic of multi-level computational neuroscience including biologically accurate representations neurons to networks of neurons, to showcase the alliance between theoretical, experimental and technological advances.

The list of the topics of interest includes (but it is not limited to):

• Computational Neuroscience;
• Neural engineering;
• Non-invasive brain stimulation;
• Neurorobotics;
• Biophysical models;
• Spiking neural network models;
• Mean-field models;
• Bioinformatics;
• Neuroimaging;
• Electroencephalography;
• Magnetoencephalography;
• fMRI;
• Neural Networks;
• Neuroscience.

Prof Steuber Volker is an expert in computational neuroscience, leads the Biocomputation Research Group at the University of Hertfordshire and has served as elected president of the Organization for Computational Neurosciences (2019-2022). Research in the Biocomputation Research Group involves the development of computational models to study biological systems, and the application of biologically-inspired machine learning algorithms for the analysis of real-world data. Before joining the University of Hertfordshire he worked as postdoc at UCL and the University of Antwerp. He has a PhD in computational neuroscience from the University of Edinburgh, an MSc in artificial intelligence from the University of Edinburgh and a first degree in neuroscience from the ETH Zürich. Volker’s current and previous funding includes grants from the Human Frontier Science Program Organization, the German DFG, the BBSRC, Innovate UK and the German National Merit Foundation.

Dr Yousif Nada first read Physics at Imperial College, followed by a PhD at Plymouth University in Computational Neuroscience, specifically working on models of the thalamocortical network. Dr Yousif spent her time as a post-doctoral researcher at Imperial College, focussing on models of deep brain stimulation for movement disorders, and at University College London, working on human motor control. Most recently, she is investigating the optimisation of MR guided focussed ultrasound for treating essential tremor via computational modelling. Dr Yousif’s work has been supported by fellowships from the Medical Research Council and the Royal Academy of Engineering and Leverhulme trust. Dr Yousif is an active member of and on the Program Committee of the Organisation of Computational Neuroscience and is an associate editor and reviewer for several journals. She actively collaborates with clinicians and industry for a multi-disciplinary approach.