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Il Memming Park


TITLE
Assistant Professor 
 
DEPARTMENT
Neurobiology & Behavior 
 
HOME INSTITUTION
Stony Brook University, Neurobiology & Behavior 
 
PHONE
(631) 632-3468 - office 
 
EMAIL
 
WEBSITE

TRAINING

I. Memming Park (박일) received a B.S. in computer science from KAIST in 2005. He received an M.S. in electrical and computer engineering in 2007 and a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering in 2010 from the University of Florida working with José C. Principe. He was a postdoctoral fellow (2010-2014) at the University of Texas at Austin working with Jonathan Pillow, before he joined the faculty of neurobiology and behavior at Stony Brook University in 2015.
  

RESEARCH INTERESTS/EXPERTISE

Many have proposed theories of how the brain works, but few of them have been rigorously tested due to difficulties in obtaining sufficiently rich neural datasets. However, recent advances in recording technology allow simultaneous observation of a large population of neurons, providing the opportunity to use statistical and machine learning tools to bridge the gap between theory and data in neuroscience. These neural signals that are noisy and high-dimensional pose a significant challenge for analysis, because (1) neural signals are non-linear & non-gaussian, and (2) the number of parameters in models usually grows with the number of neurons, causing difficulties in estimation.

I am interested in how information is encoded as spatiotemporal patterns of neural activity, and how information is processed to perform specific computations within and across brain areas. For instance, I analyze how visual motion is represented by visual cortices, and how it is subsequently integrated over time to form decisions that are represented in higher order cortices. I collaborate with experimental neurophysiologists who record neural activities, and I model their data to find structures hidden in noisy observations; structures within the signals themselves, and to relate neural activity with external stimulus and behavior.

 
You may visit my blog for more info @ http://memming.wordpress.com