BME Seminar
Presenter: Dr Ron Yu, Chair of Neuroscience at CWRU
Dr. Ron Yu is the Tilles-Weidenthal Professor and the Chair of the Department of Neurosciences at ÐÓ°ÉÊÓƵ School of Medicine. He graduated from Tsinghua University with B.S. degrees in Biological Sciences and in Solid State Physics. He earned his PhD in Molecular, Cellular and Biophysical Studies from Columbia University, working in the lab of Lorna Role on ion channels. He continued his postdoctoral training at Columbia working with Richard Axel. Dr. Yu most recently served as an investigator at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Missouri, and a professor at the University of Kansas Medical Center Department of Cell Biology and Physiology in Kansas City, Kansas. His research focuses on the complex neural circuitry of behavior, with specific focus on the mammalian olfactory system. Dr. Yu’s research explores on a systems level how different molecules and genes contribute to the development of the neural circuitry, and how the neuronal networks allow animals to perceive and understand the world.
Abstract: In this talk, I will give an overview of the research program in my lab. Then I will focus on a neural network model that we derived from the anatomical connectivity of the olfactory system, which enables robust object recognition. The model utilizes dimensional expanded representation, sparse and non-negative constraints to achieve robustness. The network is a feedforward model. There is no requirement of backpropagation, it is unsupervised, and it can achieve high levels of accuracy in classifying objects with relatively shallow layers.