Simeon Bamford
I'm a research associate with the Laboratory for Synthetic Perceptive, Emotive and Cognitive Systems at Pomeu Fabra University in Barcelona. I'm currently seconded to the Modelling of Complex Systems group at l'Istituto Superiore di Sanità in Rome. I'm working on the EU-funded ReNaChip project.
I find both the study of neural systems and the discipline of engineering them fascinating. I work as a neuromorphic engineer; we create electronic circuits which mimic computation in animal's nervous systems. This is partly to help understand how brains work and partly to search for better ways of doing the kind of computing that nervous systems are good at, for example, sensing the environment and working out how to move around in it. The circuits we create are generally integrated on microchips, so they're manufactured in the same way as the processors in personal computers, but the design is very different, often using flows of electrical current to imitate the currents which flow through the nerve cells in our brains. One of the main applications may be to create prosthetic devices that interface directly with our nervous systems or even replace parts of them, for example to create robotic limbs for people who have lost them, which can be controlled just by thought, the same as real limbs can. The project I'm working on aims to create a chip which can be implanted in a brain to demonstrate that it can perform a simple learning task as well as the part of the brain it is replacing.
For my PhD at the University of Edinburgh I worked on an alternative method for delivering events within neuromorphic systems made of many silicon chips; the events represent spikes, the electrical pulses that brain cells use to communicate with each other. I also implemented the formation and elimination of connections between neurons (a process which happens continuously in our brains, known as "synaptic rewiring"). I then used synaptic rewiring to model the development of topographic maps (ordered sets of connections between different brain areas).
In my MSc I worked on a project testing an experimental device (a planar patch-clamp chip) for electrical recording from biological nerve cells; this project gave me experience with the patch-clamp technique as well as some silicon clean-room experience.
I also briefly worked at the University of Edinburgh as a research associate on a project to develop a chip specialised for neuromorphic applications, with reconfigurable blocks of analogue circuitry, in the style of a field-programmable gate array.
Peer-reviewed journal articles
- "Synaptic Rewiring for Topographic Map Formation and Receptive Field Development", Bamford SA, Murray AF, Willshaw DJ. Neural Networks, 2010 in press. pdf
- "Large Developing Receptive Fields Using a Distributed and Locally Reprogrammable Address-Event Receiver", Bamford SA, Murray AF, Willshaw DJ. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, 2010, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 286-304. pdf
Peer-reviewed conference papers
- "Large Developing Axonal Arbors Using a Distributed and Locally-Reprogrammable Address-Event Receiver", Bamford SA, Murray AF, Willshaw DJ. IEEE International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), 2008, pp. 1464-1471. pdf
- "Synaptic Rewiring for Topographic Map Formation", Bamford SA, Murray AF, Willshaw DJ. International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks (ICANN), 2008, pp. 218-227. pdf
Theses and related publications
- "Synaptic Rewiring in Neuromorphic VLSI for Topographic Map Formation", PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2009. pdf
- MSc project (2005): Testing silicon planar patch-clamp devices. Poster; Dissertation.
Conference abstracts - not peer reviewed
- "Replacing a cerebellar microcircuit with an autonomous neuroprosthetic device", Giovannucci A, Bamford S, Hogri R, Taub A, Prueckl R, Guger C, Del Giudice P & Verschure PF, Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) Forum, 2010. Abstract
Talks
- "Modern Classical Conditioning: towards a VLSI chip for bi-directional in-vivo brain interface for rehabilitation of a learnt eye-blink response.", Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Imperial College. 19th Feb 2010. Abstract
- "Synaptic Rewiring in Neuromorphic VLSI for Topographic Map Formation", Electronic and Computer Engineering Dept., Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. 10th Jun 2008. details
- "Synaptic Rewiring in Neuromorphic VLSI for Topographic Map Formation", Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences Dept., Italian Institute of Technology. 9th Apr 2008. details
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