Computers growing in petri dishes

Will the computers of tomorrow be manufactured or will they be grown?

This question is at the heart of Lehigh University's new research aimed at designing a neural network – a computer system based on the brain and the human nervous system – from real living cells and programming it to compute a task task. Basic learning.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently announced its support for the project, amounting to more than $ 500,000, as part of a broader NSF effort announced Sept. 11 in support of the National Cancer Research Foundation (NSF). initiative Understanding the Brain and BRAIN. an effort to accelerate the development of new neurotechnologies.

"Recent developments in optogenetics, patterned optical stimulation, and high-speed optical sensing enable the simultaneous stimulation and recording of thousands of living neurons," said Xiaochen Gao, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Lehigh University. . "And scientists already know that connected living biological neurons naturally have the ability to perform calculations and learn.With the support of the NSF, we will build an experimental test bench that will allow Optical stimulation and activity detection in a living network of neurons, and we will develop algorithms to train it. "

The team, which includes associate professors and co-investigators from Lehigh, Yevgeny Berdichevsky from Biological Engineering and Zhiyuan Yan from Electrical and Computer Engineering, brings together complementary skills in IT architecture, bioengineering and signal processing. The team believes that their efforts could have a "transformative impact" in the areas of neural science and computer engineering.

In the search, the images of handwritten figures will be coded in what is called "punctual train stimuli", similar to a two-dimensional barcode. The peak train coding will then be applied optically to a group of in vitro neurons networked with optogenetic markers.

In his winning proposal to the NSF, the team explains that the impact of this work is to help computer engineers develop new ways of designing semiconductor machines and influence other research related to brain.

"We hope that scientists specializing in neurons will be able to use this technology as a test bed to study the human brain," says Berdichevsky, who has studied the causes and solutions of epilepsy and neuromuscular disorders. 39, other diseases.

"This study will study how to stabilize the living neural network so that a time-dependent plasticity-based programming protocol from Spike (STDP) can print the desired synaptic forces on a living neural network," Yan explains. "Our team will also be studying how to strategically design and apply STDP-based protocol to optimize the rate of programming and optimize the convergence rate of network states. On the algorithms side, the research will study data representation and training algorithms. account various constraints of the Wetware system that we design. "

The team's project is one of 18 interdisciplinary projects to conduct innovative research on neuronal and cognitive systems, supported by the NSF to advance basic research in four areas: neuroengineering and concepts and designs inspired by the brain, individuality and variation, cognitive. and neural processes in realistic and complex environments, as well as neuroscience and cognitive data-intensive sciences.

The projects will build on advanced research in these areas to investigate how neural and cognitive systems interact with education, engineering, and computer science as part of the Integrative Strategies for Learning program. understanding of neural and cognitive systems. The NCS program supports innovative and innovative efforts to push the boundaries of brain science.

About the team

Xiaochen Guo, recipient of the NSF CAREER 2018 Award, conducts research that harnesses emerging technologies to create energy-efficient processors, memory systems and accelerators. She is a recipient of the IBM PhD. Fellowship, P.C. Rossin, Assistant Professor, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Pathways Research Fellowship. She published her work in Proceedings of the International Symposium on Computer Architecture, Proceedings of the International Symposium on Microarchitecture, Transactions of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) on Very Large Scale Integration Systems and IEEE transactions on computers. Guo earned her PhD and MSc in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Rochester in 2011 and 2015, respectively, and her BS in Computer Science and Engineering from Beihang University.

Yevgeny Berdichevsky focuses on the application of bioMEMS / microfluidic technology to neuroscience. Current projects focus on three areas: development of culture and registration technology for high-throughput drug screens; study of signaling pathways in post-traumatic epilepsy, using high-throughput recording chips and molecular / proteomic approaches; and the use of microstructures / microfluidics to study the relationship between architecture and function of neural circuits. Prior to joining Lehigh in 2012, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. He has published articles in journals such as Journal of Neuroscience, Advanced Materials and Lab on a Chip. He has presented his work at conferences across the country and holds a US patent. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the IEEE Engineering Society in Medicine and Biology, the Society for Neuroscience and the American Epilepsy Society.

Zhiyuan Yan is dedicated to research on error control coding, communication theory, signal processing, VLSI design and the implementation of communication and signal processing systems. He is currently deputy editor of the Journal of Signal Processing Systems and was senior editor of the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing from 2011 to 2015 and deputy editor of the IEEE Communications Letters from 2008 to 2012 and IEEE Access from 2013 to 2018. He was co-guest editor for a special issue of the Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering on implementations of signal processing algorithms for OFDM systems and several special issues of Journal of Signal Processing Systems. He is a member of the Technical Circuits and Systems for Communications (CASCOM) and the VLSI Systems and Applications (VSA) Technical Committee of IEEE Circuits and Systems. He has served as Chair of the Technical Committee for the Design and Implementation of Signal Processing Systems (DISPS) at IEEE Signal Processing Society. He is a member of the honorary companies Tau Beta Pi, Sigma Xi and Phi Kappa Phi and senior member of the IEEE. He received the CAREER Award from the US National Science Foundation in 2011.

Provided by the University of Lehigh

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