About Me
I am a computer science major at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities with an expected graduation of Spring 2024. My main areas of interest are brain-inspired computing and computational neuroscience.
I am also a black belt in TaeKwonDo and I love teaching TaeKwonDo at my local dojang!
Contact at: ashley.chen.mn@gmail.com
About My Current Mentor
Nancy M. Amato is Head of the Computer Science Department and Abel Bliss Professor of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her areas of research include robotics task and motion planning, computational biology and geometry, and parallel and distributed computing.
For more information: Her Website
About My Current Project
The NSF-funded Mind in Vitro (MiV) investigation’s overarching goal is to study the potential for computation using living neurons as an alternative to von Neumann architectures. Our project is an investigation into reservoir computing (RC), a potential architecture which can use a neuron culture as a “reservoir”. RC is a machine learning strategy most commonly used for temporal classification and prediction tasks. In our summer research, we explored implementing RC using the biophysical neuron simulator Nengo, while adjusting a variety of parameters, to assess the potential of RC for neurological computation. I am currently investigating different metrics to assess the quality of a reservoir.
Findings from the summer:
My Final Report
My Final Presentation
My Blog
Blog I kept of my work over the summer doing research for the MiV expedition.