Dr. Immanuel Freedman, Ph.D., SMIEEE, MInstP

In communications and in systems pharmacology, parametric models are constructed to predict outcomes.  Chaos synchronization enables the time-domain tracking of noisy complex systems in both chaotic and non-chaotic states.  Based on an Extended Least Squares objective function, adaptive chaos synchronization combined with Nelder-Mead search is shown to provide more accurate and reliable estimates of model parameters than Nelder-Mead search alone.  Results are illustrated for chaos communication systems and mathematical models of pharmacology including the Kirschner-Panetta model of tumor growth and the endogenous cortisol system.

Biography:

Dr. Immanuel Freedman is an independent consultant in Systems, Signals, and Algorithms.  He is also affiliated with the State University of New York at Buffalo Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences.  He serves as the current Philadelphia Chapter Chair of the IEEE Communications and Information Theory Societies and as Vice-Chair of the IEEE P2673 Standards Working Group, developing a standard for patient digital biomedical data files with 3D topological mapping of macroanatomy and microanatomy for use in Big Data and Augmented Intelligence systems. He has served as Chair of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists Pharmaco-Imaging Focus Group.  He is licensed as a United States Registered Patent Agent and serves from time-to-time as an expert witness in patent cases. He has authored numerous publications and presentations including three encyclopedia articles on Video Compression.

Dr. Freedman obtained his Ph. D. degree in 1986 in Durham, England. Before receiving his Ph. D. degree, he was employed by the United Kingdom National Coal Board developing a mathematical method for early detection of coal mine fires and heating’s based on an application of the multiple Sequential Probability Ratio Test to carbon monoxide data obtained via an underground tube bundle system.

After completing his doctoral thesis on the Origin of Cosmic Rays, he turned his attention to Remote Sensing and Digital Photogrammetry as a Research Assistant at the University College, London developing a transputer-based system for automated photogrammetry and as a Research Associate at the University of Maryland Center for Automation Research developing a quadtree database of terrain models for the United States Navy.

Dr. Catheryn R. vonReyn, Ph.D.

Animals adapt their behavior according to specific sensory features present within their environment. How an animal’s nervous system extracts and integrates sensory information to guide an appropriate behavioral response remains a major question in the field of neuroscience. Within recent years, a surge in the development of genetic technologies for probing and characterizing the nervous system has brought a new level of neural accessibility to answer this question. Here, I describe how we apply and develop neural engineering tools and take advantage of the relatively small CNS (approximately 200,000 neurons) of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to map neural circuits driving sensorimotor transformations. We focus on highly conserved transformations: avoidance responses to objects approaching on a direct collision course. As a failure to recognize an approaching threat can be deleterious, animals from fruit flies to humans are capable of detecting approaching objects and employing rapid maneuvers to avoid collision or predation. Using whole cell electrophysiology and detailed behavioral quantifications, we uncover the sensorimotor circuits involved in avoidance responses and the algorithms responsible for transforming the visual information from an object’s approach into an optimal motor strategy.

Biography:

Dr. von Reyn received her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania where she investigated molecular mechanisms leading to neural circuit dysfunction after traumatic brain injury. She did her postdoc at Janelia Research Campus where she investigated the neural circuits underlying sensory to motor transformations in the fruit fly D. melanogaster. She joined Drexel University as an Assistant Professor in 2016 and heads the Neural Circuit Engineering Laboratory.