News Archive

Our group leader speaks his mind!

Read the Interview that Mihai A. Petrovici gave on Science and Politics to Uniaktuell - the online magazine of the University of Bern.

New Article in NeurIPS: Learning with slow neurons is not a problem anymore! - Info
And the awesome work of Paul Haider was selected for oral presentation at the 35th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2021)!

"Latent Equilibrium: A unified learning theory for arbitrarily fast computation with arbitrarily slow neurons" - Publication - Press Release

New lab members (December)
Very Happy that Timo Gierlich, previously one of our Master's students, decided to pursue his work with us as a PhD student!

New Article in eLife: Evolving to Learn!

"Evolving interpretable plasticity for spiking network" - Publication -
eLife Digest - Press Release

ACAIN 2021 - 1st International Advanced Course & Symposium on Artificial Intelligence & Neuroscience - Oct. 5-8 - Info

Four presentations:

• Jakob Jordan "Learning Bayes-optimal dendritic opinion pooling."
• Henrik Mettler "Evolving to Learn: Automating the search for interpretable, biologically plausible synaptic plasticity rules."
• Agnes Korcsak-Gorzo "Cortical oscillations support sampling-based computations in spiking neural network."
• Julian Göltz and Laura Kriener "Fast and energy-efficient neuromorphic deep learning with first-spike times."

New Preprint! Approximating the ground states of quantum spin models.

"Variational learning of quantum ground states on spiking neuromorphic hardware" - See Publication

Manfred-Stärk-Symposium 2021 - Grandhotel Giessbach - Sep. 26-28

Special symposium on theoretical neuroscience and neuromorphic computation dedicated to our generous benefactor Manfred Stärk and his foundation.

New Article in Nature Machine Intelligence!
Read the Press Release, the News & Views, and the related news articles.

Fast and energy-efficient neuromorphic deep learning with first-spike times - see related Publication

• Press Release: Solving Complex Learning Tasks In Brain-Inspired Computers
  
• News & Views by Charlotte Frenkel: Sparsity provides a competitive advantage
  
• New Spiking Neuromorphic Chip Could Usher in an Era of Highly Efficient AI Published on Singularity Hub, which offers daily news coverage, feature articles, and insights on key breakthroughs and future trends in science and technology.
• Human Brain Project: Neuromorphe Netze sollen Deep Learning verändern Published on MIXED.de, Germany's first and largest online magazine for mixed reality and the future of computers.
• A framework to enhance deep learning using first-spike times Published on the News website Tech Xplore, which covers the latest engineering, electronics and technology advances. The resulting interview with Ingrid Fadelli of Tech Xplore includes a short overview of our study.

Bernstein Conference - Sep. 13 - 16 - Info

Nicolas Deperrois presented the Poster "Creative memory semantization through adversarial dreaming."
For more details, read the related preprint on arXiv.

2nd PhD and Postdoc Retreat of the Department of Physiology - Sep. 10 - Info

Congrats to Henrik and Jakob for winning two of the Idorsia prizes for academic excellence for best presentations, respectively, for best Long talk - Early PhDs and Popular Vote!

MESEC - MEditerranean SEminar For Consciousness - Sep. 9 - Info

As invited speaker, Mihai A. Petrovici talked about "Aspects of cortical computation"

New Preprint! Learning across three different global brain states!

"Memory semantization through perturbed and adversarial dreaming" - See Publication

GECCO 2021 - The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference July 12 - Info

Henrik Mettler presented the Poster
"Evolving Neuronal Plasticity Rules using Cartesian Genetic Programming"

Read our Succes Story on using the Fenix Supercomputing Infrastructure!

"HPC Simulations Support Fast and Energy Efficient Deep Neuromorphic Learning" - See Article

CNS*2021 - Computational Neuroscience Meeting - July 4 - Info

Andreas Baumbach presented the Featured Oral "Cortical oscillations support sampling-based computations in spiking neural networks" -> Recording (first talk of the video)

New lab members (June)
We are thrilled to have Ben von Hünerbein continue as a PhD student!

Mila Neural-AI Reading Group - May 21 - Info

• Nicolas Deperrois presented his work on "Creative memory semantization through adversarial dreaming"

NeuroFrance 2021 - May 18-21 - Info

• Julian Göltz talked about "Fast and deep: energy-efficient neuromorphic learning with first-spike times" at the NeuroFrance 2021 satellite workshop "Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence"

New Preprint! Single neurons perform bayes-optimal cue integration.

"Conductance-based dendrites perform Bayes-optimal cue integration" - See Publication

Our work was selected for the Frontiers Research Topic!
**Neuromorphic Engineering Editors' Pick 2021**

Read the two selected articles on neuromorphic experiments with BrainScaleS systems:

• First generation "Accelerated Physical Emulation of Bayesian Inference in Spiking Neural Networks"
  
  
• Second generation "Demonstrating Advantages of Neuromorphic Computation: A Pilot Study"
  

On Apr. 15, Elena Kreutzer defending her PhD thesis successfully!

NEUROTECH Education Programme: day 6 - Apr. 13 - Info

Laura Kriener presented her work on
"Fast and deep: energy-efficient neuromorphic learning with first-spike times."

ERCIM News featured our research in their April issue!

We contributed three articles to the Brain-inspired Computing issue of the European Research Consortium for Informatics & Mathematics (ERCIM) News Magazine.

• BrainScaleS: Greater Versatility for Neuromorphic Emulation

• Fast and Energy-efficient Deep Neuromorphic Learning

• Uncovering Neuronal Learning Principles through Artificial Evolution

New Article contribution! How predictive plasticity encodes olfactory learning in fruit flies.

"Predictive olfactory learning in Drosophila" - See Publication

New Preprint! How cortical oscillations shape spike-based probabilistic inference in the brain.

"Cortical oscillations implement a backbone for sampling-based computation in spiking neural networks" - See Publication

New lab member (March)
Happy to welcome a guest PhD student from Chile: Ismael Jaras

NICE 2021 - Neuro-Inspired Computational Elements - Mar. 16-19 - Info

** Congratulations to Jakob & Julian for winning two of the four NEUROTECH prizes **
Respectively for best early researcher and best runner-up student talks

Five Talks

• Elena Kreutzer : "Natural gradient learning for spiking neurons" -> Recording
• Jakob Jordan : "Conductance-based dendrites perform reliability-weighted opinion pooling" -> Recording
• Julian Göltz : "Fast and deep neuromorphic learning with first-spike coding" -> Recording
• Korbinian Schreiber : "Closed-loop experiments on the BrainScaleS-2 architecture" -> Recording

And Two Posters

• Benjamin Cramer : "Structural plasticity on spiking neuromorphic hardware" -> Poster
• Akos Kungl : "Deep reinforcement learning for time-continuous substrates" -> Poster

COSYNE Conference & Workshop - Feb. 23-26 - Info

Four posters to disseminate our work!

• Nicolas Deperrois : "Creative memory semantization through adversarial dreaming"
• Jakob Jordan : "Learning dendritic opinion weighting by cortical neurons"
  and "Evolving to learn: discovering interpretable plasticity rules for spiking networks"
• Michael Müller : "A functional role of cortical oscillations for probabilistic computation in spiking neural networks"

New Article contribution: Report from the spiking neural network research front!

"Visualizing a joint future of neuroscience and neuromorphic engineering" - See Publication

New Preprint! An alternative to classic deep learning datasets

"The Yin-Yang dataset" - See Publication

New lab member (February)
Welcome to our new Postdoc: Dr. Kevin Max

Intel Neuromorphic Research Community (INRC) Workshop - Feb

• Laura Kriener presented "Lava Implementation of Biologically Plausible Deep Learning with Structured Neurons"

New Preprint! Evolving to Learn in an unsupervised network

"Evolving Neuronal Plasticity Rules using Cartesian Genetic Programming" - See Publication

5th HBP Student Conference on Interdisciplinary Brain Research Feb. 1 - Info

• Timo Gierlich presented the Poster "A homeostatic mechanism for plasticity in heterogeneous spiking networks."

New lab members (January)
Welcome to our new research assistant (internship): Ben von Hünerbein

On Nov. 11, Andreas Baumbach defending his PhD thesis successfully!

IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS) Oct. 13 - Info

Sebastian Billaudelle presented the Live Demonstration "Versatile Emulation of Spiking Neural Networks on an Accelerated Neuromorphic Substrate."
To go further, read the related article on IEEE.

Bernstein Conference - Sep. 29-Oct.1 - Info

Two Posters!

• Jakob Jordan: "Evolving to learn: discovering interpretable plasticity rules for spiking networks." For more details, read the related preprint
• Akos Kungl: "Self-sustained probabilistic computing on spike-based neuromorphic systems" - recorded poster presentation

Spiking Neural Networks Workshop - Aug.-Sep. 1 - Info

Julian Göltz presented the Talk "Fast and deep neuromorphic learning with time-to-first-spike coding."
For more details, read the related preprint on arXiv.

New lab members (July)
Welcome to our new PhD student Paul Haider and Postdoc Dr. Tomasz Górski !

New lab members (July)
Welcome to our new PhD student Henrik Mettler !

On May 29, Akos Kungl defending his PhD thesis successfully!

On May 11, Dominik Dold defending his PhD thesis successfully!

New lab members (May)
Welcome to our new project / lab manager Dr. Virginie Sabado !