Department of Engineering Computational and Biological Learning Lab

John P. Cunningham

Please Note: I have moved and this page is outdated from 21 Nov, 2011. A new page will be coming shortly; in the meantime please email me any CV or publication requests.

General:

• I am a postdoctoral fellow working with Zoubin Ghahramani and Carl Rasmussen in the Machine Learning Group in the Computational and Biological Learning Lab at the University of Cambridge.
• Until January 2010, I was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, where I was a member of the Neural Prosthetic Systems Laboratory of Krishna Shenoy. I also did my Ph.D. in this group (my old Stanford research page).

Links:

• Publications
• Research Interests
• Talks/Workshops
• Contact Information

• Machine learning:
  • Approximate inference
  • Fast computational methods
  • Nonparametric Bayesian methods
• Neuroengineering:
  • Machine learning methods for analysing motor cortical neural data
  • Algorithms for neural prosthetic systems (aka brain-machine interfaces)
  • Closed-loop, online testing of neural prosthetic systems

(please email me for slide requests, or with any questions)
• "Extracting Rotational Structure from Motor Cortical Data," at Society for Neuroscience, Washington, DC, USA. Nov. 13, 2011.
• "What is this that thou hast done? And the [developer] said, 'The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.'" CBL Tea Talk, Cambridge, UK, Sep. 30, 2011.
• "High performance neural prostheses: understanding and exploiting closed-loop feedback control" (invited talk) British Neuroscience Association Annual Meeting, Harrogate, UK, Apr. 19, 2011.
• "Gaussian Probabilities and Expectation Propagation," CBL Research Talk, Cambridge, UK, Apr. 11, 2011.
• "Cortical preparatory activity: representation of movement or first cog in a dynamical machine?" Computational Neuroscience Journal Club, Cambridge, UK, Feb. 01, 2011.
• "A closed-loop human simulator for understanding feedback-control and its relevance for brain-machine interfaces," at Society for Neuroscience, San Diego, CA, USA. Nov. 13, 2010.
• "The jewel has facets, and it is possible that many [histories] are moderately true... But we are only moderately certain," CBL Tea Talk, Cambridge, UK, Oct. 01, 2010.
• "Analysing Time Marked Data," CBL Research Talk, Cambridge, UK, Jul. 19, 2010.
• "Numerical Linear Algebra," Machine Learning RCC, Cambridge, UK, Apr. 29, 2010. With Peter Orbanz.
• "Gravely the men turn [the matrix] - the wrong [matrix]. But no one knows [Heywood's] name, and no one cares." CBL Tea Talk, Cambridge, UK, Apr. 28, 2010.
• "Neural Prosthetic Systems: Past, Present, and Future," CBL Research Talk, Cambridge, UK, Feb. 8, 2010.
• "Neural Prosthetic Systems: Current Problems and Future Directions," at IEEE EMBC 2009, Minneapolis, MN, USA. Sep. 4, 2009.
• "Numerical Mathematics in Machine Learning," at ICML 2009, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Jun. 18, 2009. Organized with M. Seeger and S. Sra.
• "Algorithms for Understanding Motor Cortical Processing and Neural Prosthetic Systems," Faculty job talk and Ph.D. oral defense talk, given several times throughout 2009.
• "Dimensionality reduction for multi-channel neural recordings," at COSYNE 2009, Snowbird, UT, USA. Mar. 3, 2009. Organized with B.M. Yu.
• "Toward an Improved Understanding of Motor Cortical Processing," at MIT/MGH, Charlestown, MA, USA. Dec. 15, 2008.
• "Decoding arm movements: a framework and suite of approaches," at DARPA prosthetic signal analysis summit, Columbia, MD, USA. Nov. 14, 2008. with C.A. Chestek and V. Gilja.
• "Fast Gaussian Process Methods for Point Process Intensity Estimation," at the 25th International Conference on Machine Learning, Helsinki, Finland. Jul. 7, 2008
• "Practical Optimization Tricks and Tips," at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London, London, UK. Jun. 19, 2008
• "Engineering Challenges in Neural Prosthetic Systems," at the Stanford Bioengineering Forum, Stanford, CA, USA. Feb. 26, 2008
• "Neural Basis of Reach Preparation and Neural Communication Prostheses," at the Neukom Inst. for Comp. Sci., Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA. Feb. 11, 2008
• "Engineering Challenges in Neural Prosthetic Systems," at the Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA. Feb. 8, 2008
• "Inferring Neural Firing Rates from Spike Trains using Gaussian Processes," Spotlight Presentation at Neural Information Processing Systems 20 (NIPS 20), Vancouver, BC, CA. Dec. 5, 2007
• "Inferring Neural Firing Rates from Spike Trains using Gaussian Processes," Research Talk, Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London, London, UK. Nov. 27, 2007

email

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