EE Seminar: Control Theoretic Challenges in Theoretical Neuroscience: Combining Estimation and Control

~~ (The talk will be given in English)

Speaker:   Prof. Ron Meir
                        Department of Electrical Engineering, Technion

Monday, May 16th, 2016
15:00 - 16:00
Room 011, Kitot Bldg., Faculty of Engineering

Control Theoretic Challenges in Theoretical Neuroscience: Combining Estimation and Control

Abstract
Biology discovered feedback and control long before the first control engineers appeared on the planet, and developed sophisticated control policies operating at multiple levels from molecules to cells to organisms to populations. The vast multi-scale complexity of biological systems, the highly effective control solutions provided in biology, and the limited, yet sophisticated, toolkit available to control engineers, suggests that there is much space for interaction between biological control and engineering, where both sides stand to gain. In this talk I will focus on the interaction of sensory adaptation and control in the context of a simple partially observable sensorimotor task. I will describe an approximate analytic approach to the intractable estimation/control problem, and will show that it suggests an optimal control based explanation of observed biological phenomena. I will conclude with some of the many open problems facing the reverse engineering of biological control systems.

Short Bio: 
Ron Meir is a Professor in the department of Electrical Engineering at the Technion. He completed his PhD in Physics at the Weizmann Institute in Statistical Physics, and worked for many years in the field of Machine Learning. One of his main current interests is in control and learning in natural and artificial systems.