PhD student wins EPSRC Doctoral Prize

Kyle Wedgwood, a PhD student working with Prof Stephen Coombes and Dr Ruediger Thul on 'Dynamical systems techniques for the analysis of neural networks' has been awarded an EPSRC Doctoral Training Prize. The prize consists of a two year postdoctoral position to build on work undertaken in the PhD and enhance international recognition.

Kyle will work on 'Heterogeneous networks of neural oscillators'. The main objective of the proposal is to analyse biologically realistic networks of spiking neurons, taking into account their heterogeneous nature. Kyle will analyse the existence and stability of physiologically relevant network states using powerful reduction techniques, such as polynomial chaos expansions, to simplify models and perform bifurcation analysis to elucidate the emergent behaviour of the network under variation of coupling architecture, parameter uncertainty and neurological delays. He will study scenarios in which network units are excitable, oscillatory and combinations thereof, and show under what conditions the network supports coherent behaviour. The final part of the project will consider networks of stochastic oscillators to explore fundamental noise-induced phenomena, such as array-enhanced coherence resonance.