On Vox: Week 1: Sodl(i)ering on
First week went well. I changed my schedule yet again so now I'm taking: Bio, Computational Neuroscience, and Linear Systems. Bio looks like it will be a lot of memorization ( surprise! ) but the tests are apparently based on analyzing real data which might be kinda cool.
Comp. Neuro is mostly the prof. deriving various hierarchical models of the brain, I think this will be the killer class for the term but I need to learn it so there's no dodging the bullet. It seems like there are some people in the class who follow the material so I can get some help when I need it.
Linear Systems is actually not at all what I thought it would be. At NU it was pretty much the intro to Digital Signal Processing. Here it's actually about anaylzing Linear Systems ( surprise! ) , and is intended as a follow up to classical control. The teacher is really REALLY excited to be teaching us the subject. Ordinarily it would be fairly dry but I now think this will be fun class! The prof. is researching the application of Non/linear systems theory to biological problems so I think I may ask him to be on my thesis team ( we're required to have one advisor not from the BioE faculty ).
The first week of lab was spent mostly soldering. There is a procedure this coming Tuesday so there are a lot of lose ends (literrally ) that need to get cleaned up. I don't have any experience soldering so its slow going, but its a skill I've been meaning to develop when the opportunity presents itself. The PI gave me some EMG data to look at involving activating of various ankle muscles and their effect on foot drop. The goal is to improve the current paradigm and update existing prosthetics. I don't know how far I'll get in 3 months, but I think it will be fun. Also down the pipe may be some fMRI data and labView programming.
Originally posted on jeepershcrackers.vox.com