[Comp-neuro] Comp-neuro: PhD position at L2S, south of Paris, France

[Antoine Chaillet]

Dear manager of the comp-neuro list,

Please find below a PhD offer for our lab L2S in Paris.

I would appreciate if you could publish it.

Thanks a lot in advance.

Best regards,

Antoine Chaillet


PhD position at L2S, south of Paris, France

PhD Title: Control laws for innovative deep brain stimulation in the 
treatment of Parkinson disease: provable approaches based on 
optogenitics experimental data

Supervisors: Antoine Chaillet (main advisor) and William Pasillas-Lépine

Brief description: This Ph.D. thesis aims at adapting methodologies 
issued from control theory and dynamical systems to the field of 
neuroscience. The development of formal analytical results allows a 
better understanding of some neurological phenomena, and is a necessary 
requirement for the achievement of significant progresses in therapeutic 
treatments such as deep brain stimulation. Recent experimental and 
theoretical breakthroughs now make such analytical studies reasonable. 
In particular, this work will focus on neuronal synchrony, which is 
involved in many healthy brain functions but can also lead to 
pathological phenomena (such as Parkinson's disease). The objective of 
this work is to develop new analysis and control methods, able to cope 
with the fundamentally complex behavior of neuronal populations 
(interconnection, heterogeneity, uncertainties, delays...). These 
methods will be inspired from related domains involving stability 
analysis of interconnected nonlinear systems, analysis of hybrid 
dynamics and robust control. More precisely, the Ph.D. thesis will 
comprise: the development a spike-rate model of the basal ganglia 
network based on experimental optogenetics data of healthy and 
parkinsonian primates, the confrontation of this model with a 
single-unit numerical model, the formal analysis of pathological 
oscillations onset based on the spike-rate model, and the development of 
realistic DBS control laws to alter these pathological oscillations.

Environment: The Ph.D. thesis will take place at Laboratoire des Signaux 
et Systèmes (L2S) -- Supélec, South of Paris (France), in a team 
composed of applied mathematicians and control theoreticians.

Prerequisite: Although aiming at practical fallouts and relying on 
state-of-the-art experimental data, the contributions expected from this 
Ph.D. thesis are mostly of a theoretical nature. The candidate must have 
a background in applied mathematics, nonlinear/hybrid control theory, or 
computational neuroscience. Interests in interdisciplinary research are 
required. Skills in simulation software are desirable. Knowledge of 
French language is not required, but an appropriate level of English is 
necessary.

Contact: antoine.chaillet at supelec.fr


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.neuroinf.org/pipermail/comp-neuro/attachments/20120417/fbd7a60f/attachment.html