Dear colleagues,
The Basque Center of Applied Mathematics (BCAM) in Bilbao, Spain, is hosting a 1-week course on "Statistical Physics of Neural Networks" by Yonatan Aljadeff (The Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel), during May 11-15, 2020.
The course will consist of five lessons of 2-hour each in the morning, with the possibility to deepen the material taught in the class by frontal meetings with Dr. Aljadeff during the rest of the day.
This is an excellent occasion to learn about some of the most advanced material in computational neuroscience.
The course is tailored to students with a strong background in mathematics and physics, who are either at advanced undergraduate or graduate levels, as well as to students who are strongly interested in pursuing doctoral research in computational neuroscience.
The program of the course is as follows:
1. Random matrices (RMT).
The circular and elliptic laws. A statistical physics derivation of Girko’s circular law–the spectral density of an asymmetric random matrix; and the elliptic law–the spectral density for a random matrix with correlations.
2. Transition to chaos in random networks.
Dynamic mean-field analysis (DMFT) of a neural network model with random synaptic weights.
3. Random networks with structure.
Extension of the RMT and DMFT to partially random and partially structured systems, e.g. systems with cell-type dependent interactions, distance-dependent interactions, heterogeneous and correlated degree distributions, etc.
4. The classical perceptron.
Gardner's calculation by Replica method of the capacity of a classical perceptron.
5. Perceptrons in neuroscience.
Modern applications of perceptron theory: relating predictions of the synaptic weight distribution to empirical distributions; robustness to noise via excitation-inhibition balance; learning.
Attendance to the course is free, but online registration is mandatory before May 8, 2020.
There is also limited support available for Spanish and International students (outside of The Basque Country). Students who are willing to apply for financial support must register to the course before March 6, 2020, and indicate their will to apply for funding during the registration process.
Registration and further information on the course may be retrieved from the link below:
Thank you for your consideration.
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Maurizio De Pitta'
Research Fellow
Research Line in Mathematical, Computational and Experimental Neuroscience
BCAM -- Basque Center of Applied Mathematics