Physics + Biology: Sensory and behavioural biophysics
Physics of behavior
All cells and organisms make analog measurements of their environment and process these measurements to produce adaptive responses. We are interested in determining what computations are involved in this processing: i.e. what is the software and how is it implemented? i.e. what is the hardware? Our main approach is to develop novel instrumentation and methods to measure and analyze behavioural responses at the motor output level. This systems-level approach helps us detail the molecular, cellular, and neuronal components involved in these pathways, and also allow us to ask questions that span a number of traditional scientific disciplines such as sensory biology, systems neuroscience, theoretical neuroscience, and sensory ecology.
High content phenotyping
Instead of subjectively choosing one or two behavioral measurements we try for an objective hands off approach to phenotyping. With our novel instrumentation we collect high-dimensional, high-content data, and using machine vision, machine learning, and inference techniques find compact metrics that capture the patterns in the data. We are applying these techniques in the study of thermosensory processing, thermal learning, and measures of health and aging in C. elegans.
