Florian Jug - Personal Home

>> PhD (Dr. der Wissenschaften) >> florian.jug@inf.ethz.ch >> +41 44 632 81 07 >>

Research Interests - Publications - Projects - Student Projects - Teaching

The brain is a tissue. It is a complicated, intricately woven tissue, like nothing else we know of in the universe, but it is composed of cells, as any tissue is. They are, to be sure, highly specialized cells, but they function according to the laws that govern any other cells. Their electrical and chemical signals can be detected, recorded and interpreted and their chemicals can be identified; the connections that constitute the brain's woven feltwork can be mapped. In short, the brain can be studied, just as the kidney can. -- David H. Hubel

As knowledge advances, we are able to invent better and better models, which reproduce more and more features of the real world, more and more accurately. Nobody knows whether there is some natural end to this process, or whether it will go on indefinitely. -- Edwin Thompson Jaynes

It can be shown that a single special machine can be made to do the work of all. It could in fact be made to work as a model of any other machine. The special machine may be called the universal machine. -- Alan M. Turing

All men by nature desire knowledge. -- Aristotele

Research Interests

• Cortical Computation.
• Learning in Recurrent Networks.
• Spiking Simulations.
• Siegert Neurons.
• Learning in Relational Networks.

Publications

2012

• Recurrent Competitive Networks Can Learn Locally Excitatory Topologies [Preprint]
  (joint with Matthew Cook and Angelika Steger)
  International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2012).
• Spiking networks and their rate-based equivalents: does it make sense to use Siegert neurons? [Abstract] [Poster]
  (joint with Johannes Lengler and Angelika Steger)
  Abstract and poster for the annual meeting of the Swiss Society for Neuroscience (SSN).
• On Competition and Learning in Cortical Networks [PDF-eBook]
  PhD Thesis

2011

• Interacting Maps for Fast Visual Interpretation [Preprint]
  (joint with Matthew Cook, Luca Gugelmann, Christoph Krautz, and Angelika Steger)
  International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2011).
• Neuronal Projections Can Be Sharpened by a Biologically Plausible Learning Mechanism [Preprint]
  (joint with Matthew Cook, and Christoph Krautz)
  21st International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks (ICANN '11).

2010

• Unsupervised Learning of Relations [Preprint]
  (joint with Matthew Cook, Christoph Krautz, and Angelika Steger)
  20th International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks (ICANN '10).
  
• A model of functional recovery after significant loss of neural tissue: biofeedback based healing of vestibular dysfunction [Preprint]
  (joint with Christoph Krautz and Angelika Steger)
  BMC Neuroscience.
  
• Holistically convergent modular networks: a biological principle for recurrent network architecture [Preprint]
  (joint with Matthew Cook, Luca Gugelmann, and Christoph Krautz)
  BMC Neuroscience.
  

2009

• Sharpening Projections [Preprint] [Poster]
  (joint with Matthew Cook and Christoph Krautz)
  BMC Neuroscience

2005

• Automated quality assurance for UML models [Preprint]
  (joint with Tilman Seifert and Günther Rackl)
  Informatik LIVE, volume 2, pages 496-500. Jahrestagung Informatik 2005, Gesellschaft für Informatik, September 2005
  

Projects

• BioWTA
• CoreTechs - FactorFields
• CoreTechs - FactorMaps

Past Projects:

• BioNICs - Bioinspired NeuroInformatic Circuits

Student Projects

Open projects:

• Relational Learning With Interconnected Recurrent Populations of Siegert Neurons

  Goal of this thesis is to develop, implement, and describe a model for learning relations by observing a stream of data. In contrast to classical AI approaches we want to constrain ourselves to using only neurally plausible mechanisms.

• Pathologic Plasticity in Motor Cortex (Bachelor/Master Thesis)

  Goal of this thesis is to develop, implement, and describe a model for cortical plasticity. This will include a comprehensive review of existing work on this topic.
  The model to be built will explain how cortical plasticity in motor cortex plays a crucial role in a known but rare disease - the trained inability to move fingers separately.
  more (pdf)
  

• Looking for a thesis project (Informatics or Neuroinformatics)? Write a mail or visit me in my office!
  

Past projects:

• Modeling Cortical Plasticity for Vestibular Healing
  Student: Dominik Spicher
• Handwritten Digit Recognition by a Simulated Neural Population
  Student: Subhro Roy
• Comparison of Leaky Integrate and Fire and Izhikevich neuron models
  Student: Nitant Vaidya
• Understanding Belief Propagation dialects and their application to  optimization problems
  Student: Ivo Vigan
• Techniques and Methods for Distributed Neuronal Computing
  (Part of the BioNICs project.)
  Student: Michael Schär
• Message Passing Algorithms for Random k-SAT >>
  (Part of the CoreTechs project.)
  Student: Priyanka Vijayakumar

Lectures

Lecture Assistance