From: 2022-10-25 11:15 to 12:00
Place: E:4130 (Lucas)
Contact: birger [dot] swahn [at] cs [dot] lth [dot] se
Save event to your calendar

One Computer Science MSc thesis to be presented on 25 October

Tuesday, 25 October there will be a master thesis presentation in Computer Science at Lund University, Faculty of Engineering.

The presentation will take place in E:4130 (Lucas).

Note to potential opponents: Register as an opponent to the presentation of your choice by sending an email to the examiner for that presentation (firstname.lastname@cs.lth.se). Do not forget to specify the presentation you register for! Note that the number of opponents may be limited (often to two), so you might be forced to choose another presentation if you register too late. Registrations are individual, just as the oppositions are! More instructions are found on this page.

11:15-12:00 in E:4130 (Lucas)

Presenters: Jacob Säll Nilsson, Nils Ceberg
Title: Modelling photoswitching dye memory for path integration
Examiner: Jacek Malec​​​​​​​
Supervisors: Stanley Heinze (Lund University), Barbara Webb (University of Edinburgh)

The central complex region of insect brains contains neural circuitry suitable for performing path integration, used for example by bees in order to find their way home after foraging. An artificial neural network based on this anatomy has previously been successfully modelled computationally, but without considering in detail the memory mechanism. We explore, using computational modelling, the idea of using photo-switching dye molecules as synaptic weight-based memory in a physical nanowire-based realisation of such a neural network. With a simplified model of the dye molecule dynamics and minimal changes to the network we perform a brute force parameter optimization and find that we can get a barely functional path integrator within the realistic parameter ranges of the dye molecules. We go on to suggest some additional changes to the network that increase performance to levels comparable to the previous model. Finally, we also find that the nonlinearity of the dye memory has negative consequences for the prospect of being able to use this circuitry for more general vector-based navigation, and briefly discuss how this may relate to biological memory mechanisms.

Link to popular science summary: https://fileadmin.cs.lth.se/cs/Education/Examensarbete/Popsci/221025_11SällNilssonCeberg.pdf