School of Physics Fall Colloquium Series- Dr. Suri Vaikuntanathan(UChicago)

Speaker: Dr. Suri Vaikuntanathan(U Chicago) 

Host: Itamar Kolvin

Title: Flexible computation, learning and generalization with chemical neuromodulators

Abstract: Neural computation is usually thought to be defined by the synaptic connectome. Beyond this wiring, nervous systems from invertebrates to mammals signal through neuromodulators, chemicals that are postulated to dynamically change how neurons respond. In C. elegans, this signaling has been mapped as a dense chemical network layered on the synaptic one. Here we ask: does this chemical layer just scramble the dynamics, or enable a network to compute beyond what its wiring allows? Our results point to neuromodulation as a general route to flexible computation.

Bio: Suri Vaikuntanathan co-authored research on MXenes that describes direct synthesis and chemical vapor deposition of 2D carbide and nitride materials. He is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago, where the study of statistical mechanics, information theory, and ML in chemical and biological systems and adaptable materials. His work includes Topological waves in fluids with odd viscosity and Fluctuating hydrodynamics of chiral active fluids. Suri earned a PhD in chemical physics from the University of Maryland, College Park, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley.