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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black">The<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://ruipcosta.weebly.com/"><span style="color:#954F72">Neural and Machine Learning group</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>at the University
of Bristol is looking for a PhD student to work at the intersection between computational neuroscience and machine learning (funded by a EPSRC Doctoral Training grant). We are part of the
<a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/engineering/research/computational-neuroscience/">
Bristol Computational Neuroscience Unit</a> and are associated with the world-class neuroscience and machine learning communities at Bristol, and we also collaborate with other national and international labs. Applicants should hold or expect to obtain a First
Class or Upper Second Class Honours degree or equivalent in engineering, computer science, physics, mathematics, computational neuroscience or machine learning (or equivalent), and a strong interest in neural and biological systems. This position is open to
applicants who are UK citizens, or EU citizens resident in the UK for at least 3 years.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<b><span style="color:black">Project:<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></b><i><span style="color:black">Deep temporal credit assignment with dynamic synapses</span></i><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black">Successful behaviour relies on the ability of animals and machines to predict the outcome of their actions. Selecting which synapses (or parameters) to adjust to trigger the right action is a hard problem as it depends on past sensory
information. Exactly how does the brain solve such temporal credit assignment problems has remained largely enigmatic. In this project, the student will developed a novel theoretical framework to address the temporal credit assignment problem. This framework
will be compared with experimental observations and tested in machine learning tasks in collaboration with experimental neuroscientists (Jack Mellor and Matt Jones) and machine learning researchers (Carl Henrik Ek and Dima Almaden).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:black">Relevant papers:<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<ul style="margin-top:0cm" type="disc">
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="color:black;margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">
<span style="font-size:10.0pt">Llera M, Sacramento J and Costa RP - <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959438818301028">
Computational roles of plastic probabilistic synapses</a> - Current Opinion in Neurobiology, Volume 54, Feb 2019<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="color:black;margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">
<span style="font-size:10.0pt">Sacramento J, Costa RP, Bengio Y and Senn W - <a href="https://papers.nips.cc/paper/8089-dendritic-cortical-microcircuits-approximate-the-backpropagation-algorithm">
Dendritic cortical microcircuits approximate the backpropagation algorithm</a> - 32nd Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2018), Montreal, Canada.<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="color:black;margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">
<span style="font-size:10.0pt">Costa RP, Assael YM, Shillingford B, Freitas N and Vogels TP -
<a href="http://papers.nips.cc/paper/6631-cortical-microcircuits-as-gated-recurrent-neural-networks">
Cortical microcircuits as gated-recurrent neural networks</a> - 31st Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS 2017), Long Beach, CA, USA.<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="color:black;margin-left:0cm;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">
<span style="font-size:10.0pt">Costa RP, Froemke RC, Sjöström PJ and van Rossum MCW -
<a href="https://elifesciences.org/articles/09457">Unified pre- and postsynaptic long-term plasticity enables reliable and flexible learning</a> - eLife 2015; 10.7554/eLife.09457<o:p></o:p></span></li></ul>
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<span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="color:black">University of Bristol:</span></b><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black">The University of Bristol is a<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://youtu.be/fg7EbfKPo0o"><span style="color:#954F72">world-class university</span></a> ranked among the top 10 universities in the UK. The university
has one of the strongest neuroscience (<a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/neuroscience/"><span style="color:#954F72">http://www.bristol.ac.uk/neuroscience/</span></a>) and machine learning communities in the UK (e.g.: Visual Information Lab, Intelligent Systems
Lab and Institute for Statistical Science). The university also runs the unique <a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/neural-dynamics/">
Wellcome Trust Doctoral Program in Neural Dynamics</a> with PhD students working at the intersection between theoretical and experimental neuroscience, and is associated with the Alan Turing Institute for data science and artificial intelligence. The city itself
has been ranked as the best place to live in the UK and one of the most cool destinations in the world according to National Geographic.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<span style="color:black"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<b><span style="color:black">Details on how to apply:</span></b><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="color:black"><a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/engineering/postgraduate/funding/epsrcdta.html"><span style="color:#954F72">http://www.bristol.ac.uk/engineering/postgraduate/funding/epsrcdta.html</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="color:black">When applying online please follow the instructions in the link above and include a CV, two references and a motivation letter.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<b><span style="color:black">Deadline</span></b><span style="color:black">: 28<sup>th</sup><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>of February 2019<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;color:black">Best wishes,</span><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#222222"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><b><span style="font-size:9.0pt;color:#444444">Rui Ponte Costa</span></b><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#222222"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;color:#444444">Lecturer (Assistant professor) in Computational Neuroscience and Machine Learning<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;color:#444444">University of Bristol, UK</span><span style="font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#222222"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;color:#999999">Visiting Research Scientist at University of Oxford/Bern</span><span style="font-size:11.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;color:#7C7C7C"><a href="http://ruipcosta.weebly.com"><span style="color:#7C7C7C">http://ruipcosta.weebly.com</span></a></span><span style="font-size:9.0pt;color:#999999">
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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