- #176
Delong
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I love plant chemistry too. Finally another kindred plant soul.
Pythagorean said:I already mentioned my B.S. in Physics in this thread long ago. I've since defended and gotten my M.S. in physics/neuroscience (designed my own theoretical neuroscience degree through the physics and biology departments). Now enrolled and attending a true theoretical neuroscience program for my PhD. My area of expertise is modelling electrically coupled biophysical neural networks. I use tools and language from nonlinear dynamics and chaos to characterize such networks. I also model real animal neurons by fitting the kinetics from clamping experiments with the organism to accepted biophysical models.
I study a lot of developmental and cognitive neuropsychology in my free time and have personally performed the meltzoff experiment with both of my newborn children. I'm also interested in abiogenesis and other aspects of evolution, particularly with respect to the nervous system.
KCC2 said:What kind of courses you took? I'm a neurobio major, but my passion has kind of shifted to mathematics. I'm also taking physics courses and I've been thinking about doing a double major on neurobio and maths/physics. I really could see myself as an applied mathematician, or theoretical physicist, but also as a biophysicist who models nerve cells or something. What I have realized is that I want to do something mathematical. Our bio department really does nothing mathematical, so that's a bit problematic I guess. There's a big electrophysiology lab, but they are experimentalists. Anyway, at the moment I'm taking a lot of courses, all in neurobio, maths and physics. I'm just a 2nd year student so I could study ~5 more years for my double master's very realistically (free education here). After that I'd like to continue to PhD program (It's the standard here that every PhD student has a MSc). My plans may sound big but I'm very enthusiastic about my studies, and I spend a big amount of hours on studying.
Pythagorean said:The courses that contributed most to my research were: computational physics (we used matlab), nonlinear dynamics and chaos, a handful of neurobio classes, but especially journal club style where we take turns presenting papers.
Knowing the basics of ODEs and my general physics/math background helped a lot with mathematical intuition and knowing how to use the models and analyze complex data sets. The background for ODE's is things like calculus, linear algebra, differential equations.
Oh, also signal analysis (like digital signal processing) can be helpful for analyzing experimental data. I'm particularly interested in peak detection and characterization because I like my models to match experiment. Knowing how real world data works is very helpful in that regard.