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Joseph Lizier's team

Joseph Lizier -- Information Dynamics Team

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PhD opportunities

Join us!

Please contact me regarding PhD projects in complex systems at The University of Sydney, focussing on using information theory to study the dynamics of information processing in complex systems, such as in a computational neuroscience setting.
When you mail me, you should include:

You will likely need a First-class honours equivalent undergraduate record in order to qualify for scholarships at USyd; the competition for scholarships for international students is particularly competitive.

Current team members / associates

Preethom Pal
The University of Sydney - B Adv Computing Honours Student - 2022-ongoing
Preethom is exploring how information flows relate to neural hierarchies.

Ruomin Zhu
The University of Sydney - PhD Student - 2019-ongoing (co-supervised, with Zdenka Kuncic as primary supervisor)
Ruomin is exploring the use of neuromorphic nanowire networks for machine learning.
Google scholar page
Outcomes: Ruomin has published several papers interpreting the information dynamics of how these networks compute, and how this relates to their underlying critical dynamics.

Aria Nguyen
The University of Sydney - MPhil Student - 2022-ongoing (co-supervised, with Ben Fulcher as primary supervisor)
Aria is exploring use of time-series features to enhance transfer entropy estimation.

Trent Henderson
The University of Sydney - PhD Student - 2021-ongoing (co-supervised, with Ben Fulcher as primary supervisor)
Trent is working on multivariate time-series analysis.
Google scholar page

Simon Watson
The University of Sydney - PhD Student - 2021-ongoing (co-supervised, with Mike Harré as primary supervisor)

Eva Midtgaard
The University of Sydney - PhD Student - 2021-ongoing (co-supervised, with Mike Harré as primary supervisor)

Dang Nguyen
The University of Sydney - PhD Student - 2018-ongoing (co-supervised, with Mikhail Prokopenko as primary supervisor)

Adam Svahn
The University of Sydney - MPhil Student - 2019-submitted (co-supervised, with Mikhail Prokopenko as primary supervisor)

Christina Jamerlan
The University of Sydney - PhD Student - 2022-ongoing (co-supervised, with Mikhail Prokopenko as primary supervisor)

Jaime Jimenez
The University of Sydney - PhD Student - 2022-ongoing (co-supervised, with Mike Harré as primary supervisor)

Previous team members / associates

David Shorten
PhD Student - 2018-2022 (primary supervisor)
David was exploring how we can better estimate information flows between spiking neurons.
Google scholar page
Outcomes: David's work resulted in a new estimator for transfer entropy between spike trains, which he used to reveal how information flows in developing neural cultures tend to lock-in early.
Now at: Postdoc at The University of Adelaide.

Conor Finn
Postdoc 2019-2021;
PhD Student - 2016-2019 (primary supervisor)
Conor was exploring the partial information decomposition approach to information regression.
Home page and Google scholar page
Outcomes: Conor's work has resulted in a new pointwise and component-wise approach to information decomposition, with several key publications, and the 2019 Entropy journal Best Paper award.
Now at: Postdoc at Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig.

Leonardo Novelli
PhD Student - 2017-2020 (primary supervisor)
Leonardo was exploring the performance of effective network inference algorithms for large neural imaging data sets.
Google scholar page
Outcomes: Leo's work provided the first evidence of the efficacy of network inference using multivariate transfer entropy at realistic scales of brain imaging data.
Now at: Postdoc at Monash University.

Oliver Cliff
Postdoc 2019-2020 (primary supervisor, Ben Fulcher and Mac Shine co-supervisors);
CSIRO - Summer Vacation Student - 2012/13 (co-supervised with Dr. Rosalind Wang and Dr. Mikhail Prokopenko)
During his postdoc with me, Oliver was exploring information flows in brain imaging data, examining impact of data properties on information flow and network inference. During his vacation work (prior to PhD) Oliver explored information transfer between simulated robots in robotic football games (RoboCup), and the relationship of these dynamics to game outcomes.
Home page and Google scholar page
Outcomes: Oliver's postdoc work resulted in a breakthrough in handling autocorrelations in estimating Granger causality and other multivariate information-theoretic measures (with a linear estimator). Oliver's earlier summer vacation work resulted in a paper at the RoboCup'2013 Symposium, which received the Best Paper Award. Oliver went on to study for a PhD in the Australian Centre for Field Robotics at The University of Sydney.
Now at: at Vivienne Court Trading, after a term as a Postdoc at The School of Physics (University of Sydney) 2020-2022.

Mike Li
The University of Sydney - Capstone student 2017 and Research Assistant 2018-19 (co-supervsised with Mac Shine as primary)
Mike has been exploring empirical measurement of information transfer in neural spike trains, and relation of information transfer to underlying structure and dynamics in neural models.
Outcomes: Mike's work resulted in two papers relating information transfer to phase transitions in a neural mass model, and mutual information between nodes in an artificial neural network to its learning.

Emanuele Crosato
The University of Sydney - PhD Student - 2015-ongoing (co-supervised, with Mikhail Prokopenko as primary supervisor)
Emanuele was exploring information dynamics and thermodynamics of swarming/flocking behaviour.
Google scholar page
Now at: Postdoc at UNSW

Capstone / Honours / Summer vacation students

Joe Lizier, Last Updated 6/12/2022. ;