Computational Neuroscience

Computational Neuroscience, a relatively recent discipline within the broader field of neuroscience, has emerged as a crucially important discipline for furthering our understanding of brain function and translating this knowledge into technological applications.  Boston University faculty have made many foundational contributions in computational neuroscience, and BU currently has one of the largest and most varied computational neuroscience faculties in the world.

The BU Graduate Program for Neuroscience (GPN) offers a Computational Neuroscience PhD Specialization for graduate students who wish to pursue rigorous training in this exciting field.  While all GPN students have the opportunity to take coursework or conduct thesis research that is computationally based, formal studies in computational neuroscience are organized by the Computational Neuroscience Curriculum Committee, led by Academic Director Frank Guenther (Associate Director of GPN) and including faculty members Uri Eden, Nancy Kopell, Mark Kramer, David Mountain, and Barbara Shinn-Cunningham.

The Computational Neuroscience curriculum supplements core neuroscience training with advanced training in a wide array of computational methods for (i) studying the nervous system and (ii) developing neuroscience-related technologies. Topics of study include neural network modeling, neural dynamics, sensory, motor, and cognitive modeling, statistical modeling, sensory prosthesis, brain-machine interfaces, neuroinformatics, neuromorphic engineering, and robotics. Coursework is chosen from the wide array of computational and neuroscience courses offered by the many departments and programs of the main Boston University campus and the BU School of Medicine. Students pursue their thesis interests in laboratories across the University and have the opportunity to combine hands on experimental research with highly sophisticated computational analysis.

Potential applicants to the Computational Neuroscience PhD specialization should contact GPN for general admissions questions. Specific questions about the computational neuroscience specialization can be sent to Kate Nelson, Computational GPN Neuroscience Administrator (knelso01@bu.edu).

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BU Computational Neuroscience Faculty

	Jason Bohland Speech neuroscience; neuroimaging; neuroinformatics		Daniel Bullock Neural modeling of voluntary action and reinforcement learning
	Gail Carpenter Neural networks; pattern recognition; neuromorphic technology		Michael Cohen Speech processing; measurement theory; cardiovascular modeling
	Stephen Colburn Binaural hearing; neural modeling; hearing impairments		James Collins Synthetic biology; systems biology; sensory prosthesis
	Uri Eden Mathematical and statistical modeling of neural spiking activity		Timothy Gardner Songbird neural circuit development; neural recording technology
	Anatoli Gorchetchnikov Spatial representations and navigation		Stephen Grossberg Neural modeling of vision; speech; cognition; emotion; motor control; navigation; mental disorders
	Frank Guenther Speech neuroscience; neural prosthesis; neuroimaging		Xue Han Neurotechnology, optogenetics, neural prosthetics
	Michael Hasselmo Memory-guided behavior; role of oscillations in cortical function		Marc Howard Cognition and neural representation of time and space
	Allyn Hubbard Auditory physiology; VLSI; neurocomputing		Eric Kolaczyk Statistical analysis of network-indexed data; biological networks modeling and data analysis
	Mark Kon Machine learning and bioinformatics; neural network theory		Nancy Kopell Neural dynamics; rhythmic behavior in neural networks
	Mark Kramer Neural dynamics; neural rhythms in normal and diseased brains		David Mountain Auditory information processing; biomedical electronics
	Hamid Nawab Signal processing of neural activity; auditory scene analysis		Jason Ritt Sensorimotor behaviors; active sensing; neural prosthesis
	Michele Rucci Active perception; visual neuroscience; robotics		Eric Schwartz Computational neuroscience; machine vision; neuroanatomy
	Kamal Sen Natural sound encoding; auditory plasticity; birdsong		Barbara Shinn-Cunningham Auditory neuroscience; spatial hearing; neuroimaging
	David Somers Visual perception and cognition; neuroimaging; neural modeling		Cara Stepp Sensorimotor function disorders
	Malvin Teich Biosignal analysis; audition; vision; biological imaging		Jason Tourville Speech motor control; neuroimaging; neuroanatomy
	Lucia Vaina Computational models of vision; neuroimaging		Massimiliano Versace Neural modeling; whole-brain systems; neuromorphic technology; cognitive robotics
	Arash Yazdanbakhsh Human vision and its modeling; human electrophysiology and psychophysics