Section: Other Grants and Activities
National initiatives
DGE Ministry grant COMAC “Optimized multitechnique control of aeronautic composite structures”
Participants : Laurent Bougrain, Marie Tonnelier.
The goal of this three-years project is to develop a powerful system of control on site, in production and in exploitation, of aeronautical pieces made of composite. It takes up the challenge of the precise, fast and local inspection on composite pieces of aeronautical structures new or in service by using techniques of non-destructive control more effective and faster to increase the lifespans of the structures of planes. This project requires a decision-making system including fast methods of diagnostic based on several optical technics as non-destructive control.
Bio-inspired spatial computing: ARC Amybia
Participant : Bernard Girau.
Our regular collaborations with researchers from the Maia team have shown that we share common computation paradigms based on massively distributed and local models that are inspired by biological systems. This has led us to join our efforts in an original collaboration within the Amybia project led by Nazim Fatès (ARC INRIA), together with Hugues Berry who works on similar models by exploring a bio-inspired approach to propose challenging paradigms for spatial computing within the Alchemy team. This collaboration is also linked with our hardware implementation activities, since it has resulted in an embedded implementation of a biological inspired model for the decentralized gathering of computing agents, as well as in a block-synchronous implementation of the environment of this model to study its phase transition properties [7] .
ARC MACCAC
Participants : Frédéric Alexandre, Thierry Viéville.
Since neuronal information processing is related to the brain bio-electrical activity, measured by current neuro imaging techniques at different time and space scales, from neurons to the brain as a whole (e.g. LFP, ECoG, EEG, MEG), the analysis of such complex data coming from these measurements requires the parallel development of suitable models. Namely, these models have to be, on the one hand, close enough to phenomenology, taking into account the various types of bio-electrical activity and their scales relations, in order to propose a coherent representation of information processing in the brain (from neurons to neuronal populations, cortical columns, brain area, etc). On the other hand, these models must be well posed and analytically tractable. This requires a constant interaction between neurobiology, modeling and mathematics. In this spirit, this project, directed by Bruno Cessac (NEUROMATHCOMP), aims to tackle the following questions: (i) Mesoscopic modeling of cortical columns, bifurcations, and imaging. (ii) Statistical analysis of spike trains. The CORTEX team brings its computer science expertise, mainly regarding the question (ii) and the OI modality regarding the question (i). Collaborations with other teams (ALCHEMY (INRIA); CORTEX (INRIA); INCM (CNRS); LJAD (U NiceCNRS); NEUROMATHCOMP (INRIA)) are developed thanks to this initiative.
ANR project PHEROSYS
Participants : Dominique Martinez, Hana Belmabrouk.
This collaborative project in systems Biology (ANR-BBSRC SysBio) with INRA (Paris, FR) and the University of Sussex (UK) explores olfactory coding in the insect pheromone pathway through models and experiments. More information available at http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/research/projects/PheroSys/index.php/ .
ANR project MAPS
Participants : Frédéric Alexandre, Yann Boniface, Elham Ghassemi, Nicolas Rougier, Thierry Viéville.
This collaborative project with INCM (Marseille), UMR Perception and Movement (Marseille) and LIRIS (Lyon) aims at re-examining the relationship between structure and function in the brain, taking into account the topological (spatial aspects) and hodological (connectivity) constraints of the neuronal substrate. We think that those constraints are fundamental for the understanding of integrative processes, from the perception level to the motor level and the initiation of coordinated actions.
Project of the CNRS NeuroInformatics program on olfaction
Participant : Dominique Martinez.
The project "Olfactory coding" (2008-2009) from the CNRS program "Neuroinformatics" with the CNRS UMR5020 (Lyon) explores the role of spike timing in olfactory coding.
Project of the CNRS NeuroInformatics program on reinforcement learning
Participants : Frédéric Alexandre, Hervé Frezza-Buet, Nicolas Rougier.
In this collaboration with the MAIA team, Supelec Campus de Metz and the Interative and Cognitive Neuroscience Centre in Bordeaux, we are developing bio-inspired reinforcement learning procedures, on the basis of experimental data from behavioral recordings in rats.
Project of the CNRS NeuroInformatics program on neural coding in the retina
Participants : Frédéric Alexandre, Laurent Bougrain, Axel Hutt, Thierry Viéville.
The new project "Sensory Transduction to Perception " (2009-2010) from the CNRS program "Neuroinformatics" aims to initiate the research cooperation of groups at the University of Nice, the University of Santiago de Chile and the University of Valparaiso in Chile. The aim of the project is the better understanding of the neural coding in the retina in the presence of natural stimuli. To this end, in-vivo experiments are performed in the Chilean laboratories and the French groups analyse and model the data obtained.
