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post-doc: Post-Doc Position - Plasticity of an insect brain: a neuro-evolutionary approach
Where: Toulouse, France,
France
What: Duration: 2 years + 2 renewable years
Starting date: Jan-Jun 2025
Summary: The visual navigation behaviour of insects such as ants and bees is one of the most remarkable example of the ability of mini-brains to produce sophisticated and robust behaviours in complex environments. We have excellent recordings of the trajectory effected by these insects as they venture out of their nest to forage for food. Also, thanks to the development of the neurobiological tools in insects, we have an increasingly detailed description of the circuitry of these mini-brains. These networks, made up of a large number of interacting units (the neurons), are the site of a highly dynamic internal activity that enable an efficient coupling of the organism with its environment. Current insect neural models explain well the ability of the ants to navigate at a t-time, but do not explain the ability of insects to self-develop their navigational skills and compensate to impairments, that is, their plasticity and resilience. This project aims at developing plastic neural models that capture the insect navigational plasticity and resilience.
The neuro-evolutionary approach: simulation of navigating ant-agent models equipped with evolving, plastic neural networks models, which process visual information and drive motor action. These virtual agents will navigate in virtual reconstructions of ants’ natural environment, so as to generate feedbacks from motor action to perception. The evolved agents’ behaviours will be compared with the observed behaviours of real ants. The evolved neural architecture will be tuned towards and compared with real insect neural circuits.
Environment: The position is funded by the ERC-consolidator-grant project RESILI-ANT, led by Dr. Antoine Wystrach, expert in ant navigation neural models. The participant will be hosted within the project team in the University of Toulouse Paul Sabatier, and work closely with the PI Antoine Wystrach, another post-doc and two PhD students performing behavioural studies in the field and in virtual reality, and a research engineer.
Applicant profile
- Strong background in neuroevolutionary algorithms.
- Suggested specifics skills: NEAT, NAS, Quality Diversity, Recurrent Networks, Plasticity rules.
- Ability to develop custom neuroevolutionary approaches
- Use of computing clusters.
- General skills in Python.
- Skills in 3D image rendering (optional)
Who: Antoine Wystrach <antoine.wystrach@univ-tlse3.fr>, Dennis Wilson <dennis.wilson@isae.fr>
When: Until 2024-11-30 10:00
Presented at next GECCO?: yes
Return to the list
post-doc: Post-Doc Position - Plasticity of an insect brain: a neuro-evolutionary approach
Where: Toulouse, France,
FranceWhat: Duration: 2 years + 2 renewable years
Starting date: Jan-Jun 2025
Summary: The visual navigation behaviour of insects such as ants and bees is one of the most remarkable example of the ability of mini-brains to produce sophisticated and robust behaviours in complex environments. We have excellent recordings of the trajectory effected by these insects as they venture out of their nest to forage for food. Also, thanks to the development of the neurobiological tools in insects, we have an increasingly detailed description of the circuitry of these mini-brains. These networks, made up of a large number of interacting units (the neurons), are the site of a highly dynamic internal activity that enable an efficient coupling of the organism with its environment. Current insect neural models explain well the ability of the ants to navigate at a t-time, but do not explain the ability of insects to self-develop their navigational skills and compensate to impairments, that is, their plasticity and resilience. This project aims at developing plastic neural models that capture the insect navigational plasticity and resilience.
The neuro-evolutionary approach: simulation of navigating ant-agent models equipped with evolving, plastic neural networks models, which process visual information and drive motor action. These virtual agents will navigate in virtual reconstructions of ants’ natural environment, so as to generate feedbacks from motor action to perception. The evolved agents’ behaviours will be compared with the observed behaviours of real ants. The evolved neural architecture will be tuned towards and compared with real insect neural circuits.
Environment: The position is funded by the ERC-consolidator-grant project RESILI-ANT, led by Dr. Antoine Wystrach, expert in ant navigation neural models. The participant will be hosted within the project team in the University of Toulouse Paul Sabatier, and work closely with the PI Antoine Wystrach, another post-doc and two PhD students performing behavioural studies in the field and in virtual reality, and a research engineer.
Applicant profile
- Strong background in neuroevolutionary algorithms.
- Suggested specifics skills: NEAT, NAS, Quality Diversity, Recurrent Networks, Plasticity rules.
- Ability to develop custom neuroevolutionary approaches
- Use of computing clusters.
- General skills in Python.
- Skills in 3D image rendering (optional)
Who: Antoine Wystrach <antoine.wystrach@univ-tlse3.fr>, Dennis Wilson <dennis.wilson@isae.fr>
When: Until 2024-11-30 10:00
Presented at next GECCO?: yes
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