News Archives

Fall 2005

We now have a local copy of the J-DSP software installed. This is in preparation for its incorporation into the Spring 2006 edition of our Multimedia Computing course.

Prof. Stiber is back from his sabbatical at the University of Florida Electrical and Computer Engineering Department's Computational Neuroengineering Laboratory.

Conference paper:

  1. Spanias, A., V. Atti, R. Chilimula, S. Haag, A. Papandreou-Suppappola, C. Tepedelenlioglu, J. Zhang, F. Bodreaux-Bartels, M. Stiber, T. Kasparis, and P Loizou, "Work in Progress - Multi-university development and dissemination of online laboratories in probability theory, signals and systems, and multimedia computing", IEEE Frontiers in Education, Indianapolis, October 2005.

Summer 2005: Conference Presentations

  1. Stiber, M. "Bifurcations of neural transient responses", International Workshop on Neuronal Coding, Marburg, Germany, August 2005.

March 2005: Grant Funded

The Biocomputing Laboratory has received a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation in collaboration with Arizona State University, the University of Texas, Dallas, and the University of Rhode Island. This support will be used to develop a set of on-line computer laboratory modules and study materials for the lab's digital signal computing course for software majors.

February 2005: New Journal Papers

  1. Michael Stiber, "Spike timing precision and neural error correction: local behavior", Neural Computation 17(7): 1577-1601, 2005.

    Summary: One of the open questions in neural computation is how important the timing of nerve cell outputs is. Our research shows that it is plausible that nerve cells could use high-precision outputs as a type of error correcting code. Besides addressing questions in biocomputing, this could have applications to pulse-coded and secure communications.

  2. Leonel Gomez, Ruben Budelli, Rafael Saa, Michael Stiber, and Jose Pedro Segundo, "Pooled spike trains of correlated presynaptic inputs as realizations of cluster point processes", Biological Cybernetics, vol. 92, no. 2, pp. 110-127, 2005.

    Summary: One of the difficulties facing people investigating biocomputing is that of high connectivity: each nerve cell typically sends and receives outputs and inputs to and from thousands of other cells. In this work, we apply the concept of cluster point processes to analyzing the responses of nerve cells to large numbers of inputs.

Academic Year 2004-05: People

Prof. Stiber is a Visiting Associate Professor in the University of Florida Electrical and Computer Engineering Department's Computational Neuroengineering Laboratory for the academic year. While there, he has been working on models of nervous system formation for cortical cell cultures: living nervous system tissue grown in "petri dishes". These cultures show promise as tools for investigating neurological diseases like epilepsy. They also serve as the basic building blocks of a new generation of hybrid biological/electronic computing devices.

Summer 2004: Conference Presentations

  1. Michael Stiber and Mark Pottorf, "Response space construction for neural error correction", International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, Budapest, Hungary, July 2004.

    Summary: This work with a UWB student continues our investigation of error correction in biocomputing by examining the detailed internal dynamics of a single nerve cell in response to individual inputs. We hope to use this information to build a more general model for information coding in nervous systems that takes into account timing precision and errors.

  2. Michael Stiber and Thomas Holderman,"Global behavior of neural error correction", International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, Budapest, Hungary, July 2004.

    Summary: This work, also with a UWB student, takes a broad view of the issue of nerve cell error correction. It shows how techniques previously used for "static" neural behaviors can be extended to aid our understanding of error correction.

  3. Michael Stiber, "A Signal Computing Course for Software Undergraduates", Meeting of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education, Norfolk, VA, March 2004.

    Summary: We have been developing a laboratory course that introduces the concepts of computing with real-world signals to UWB students. These are topics that are usually covered in an electrical engineering curriculum. In the BCL course, students learn the software and systems issues related to digital signal computing.