Registration is closed for the 2025 BISCCITs Workshop at the University of Colorado- Boulder, June 16th - 18th 2025
2023 SOAR/BISCIT Workshop
March 22-24, 2023
Location: The BRICC, 4100 Fairfax Dr #450 (4th floor), Arlington, VA 22203
The main meeting room is Research A/B; activities in other rooms will be noted in the schedule
Building elevators are operational at 8:00am sharp; if you arrive early, please wait in the lobby
More information about the BRICC: https://briccdc.com/
Zoom: https://washington.zoom.us/j/98441048818?pwd=STJReDVWTWVwVTNQV1dETlNFWFEvZz09
Meeting ID: 984 4104 8818, Passcode: 719352
All times are listed in Eastern Time
Keynote talks and lightning talks will be available on Zoom
Some tutorials will be on Zoom; see Tutorial Information at the end of this schedule for details
Tutorials
Come prepared with any required download/software; review the Tutorial information at the end of this schedule for what is needed for each tutorial.
Commercial drone and crazyflie tutorial has two sessions; each limit 30 people; sign up required
Wednesday, March 22, 2023
12:00
Arrive (you are welcome to bring lunch with you)
12:30-13:00
Welcome: Tom Daniel, Pat Bradshaw, Ric Wehling
13:00-14:30
Keynote talks
Session chair: Lori Schweikert, Zoom chairs: Michelle Hickner, Jeremy Didion
“Larval stomatopod vision: a deep dive into little eyes”
Marisa McDonald, Postdoc, NRC Research Associate, Air Force Research Labs Nature Inspired Team
“Bioinspired aquatic vehicles for ocean exploration: robotic jellyfish, shark skin surfaces, and fish fins”
Nicole W. Xu, NRC Postdoctoral Scholar, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory & Visiting Assistant Professor, Paul M. Rady Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder
“The diverse utilities of distributed vision: the neuroethology of many-eyed animals”
Daniel Chappell, Postdoc, NRC Research Associate, Air Force Research Lab Nature Inspired Team
14:30-15:00
Break
15:00-17:00
Lightning talks – see list of speakers at end of schedule
Session chair: Tom Daniel, Zoom chair: Parker McDonnell
Talks by remote participants are first, followed by talks by in-person participants
17:00-20:00
Post-lightning talk discussions and dinner (food provided, drinks available for purchase)
Bronson Bierhall, 4100 Fairfax Dr, Arlington, VA 22203
Thursday, March 23, 2023
8:00
Arrive
8:30-10:00
Keynote talks
Session chair: Huai-Ti Lin, Zoom chairs: Meenakshi Vengarai, Yu Yang
“Sensing in Flight: Individual Mechanosensory Neurons Encode Multiple Features of Wing Bending”
Ali Weber, Postdoc, Brunton & Daniel Labs, University of Washington
“Spatial memory eclipses sensory information in free-flying Egyptian fruit bats”
Team talk: Nikita Finger & Xiaoyan Yin, Postdocs, Batlab, Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University
“Aeroelastic flutters in dragonfly wings”
Alexandra Yarger, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Huai-Ti Lin Lab, Imperial College London
10:00-10:30
Break (coffee and fruit provided)
10:30-12:00
Tutorials: (see details at end of schedule)
Tutorial 1 (in Research A/B): Image processing/computer vision
Tutorial 2 (in Collaboration A/B): Commercial drone and crazyflie (limit 30 people)
12:00-13:00
Working lunch (provided) – collaboration discussions
13:00-14:30
Keynote talks
Session chair: Simon Sponberg, Zoom chair: Shivansh Dave
“Matched filters for visuomotor control in butterflies”
Jack Supple, Postdoc, Krapp Lab, Imperial College London
“Smelling the Light and Seeing the Wind: Active Sensing in Insect Flight”
Team talk: David Stupski and Ben Cellini, Postdocs, van Breugel lab, University of Nevada Reno
“From moths to man: mode-switching solves the explore-vs-exploit problem”
Debojyoti Biswas, Postdoctoral Fellow, LIMBS Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University
14:30-15:00
Break
15:00-16:30
Tutorials: (see details at end of schedule)
Tutorial 1 (in Research A/B and Zoom): Exploiting sparsity: compressed sensing & beyond
Tutorial 2 (in Collaboration A/B): Commercial drone and crazyflie (limit 30 people)
Note: the morning and afternoon crazyflie workshops are identical.
Friday, March 24, 2023
8:00
Arrive
8:30-10:00
Keynote talks
Session chair: Laura Bagge, Zoom chair: Maitri Manjunath
“Surface detection and avoidance on microdrones using multimodal sensor integration”
Simon Wilshin, Postdoctoral Researcher, Structure and Motion Lab, Royal Veterinary College
“Optimizing Insect Electroantennogram Sensor Performance with Fluidic Systems for Organ Perfusion”
Angela Dixon, Assistant Professor, Department of Biology (primary), Department of Biomedical Engineering (secondary), Case Western Reserve University
“Distributed Sensing and Novel Control Techniques for Agile Robotics: Challenges and Opportunities”
Sergio Araujo-Estrada, Assistant Professor in Control and Robotics, Department of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, University of Southampton
10:00-10:30
Break (coffee and fruit provided)
10:30-12:00
Tutorials: (see details at end of schedule)
Tutorial 1 (in Research A/B and Zoom): Applying control theory to behavioral & neural datasets
Tutorial 2 (in Collaboration A/B): Simple methods in computational neuroscience: feature extraction and identification
12:00-13:00
Working lunch (provided) – collaboration discussions
13:00-14:30
Keynote talks
Session chair: Graham Taylor, Zoom chair: Marko Ilić
“Feathers: A Multi-functional Structural System for Flight and Sensing”
Jasmin Wong, Postdoc, Bio-inspired Flight Lab, University of Bristol
“Biologically derived insights on how morphing can control flight stability”
Christina Harvey, Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, UC Davis
“Neural architecture of leg mechanosensory circuits in Drosophila”
Sweta Agrawal, Assistant Professor, Virginia Tech University
14:30-14:45
Collaboratory introduction and instructions: Tom Daniel
14:45-16:30
Collaboratory (directed collaborative discussions)
Any the following rooms are available:
Research A/B
Collaboration A/B
Perseverance
Breakout A
Breakout B
Café
16:30-16:45
Workshop close: Tom Daniel
Lightning talks
Jordanna Sprayberry, Muhlenberg College
Floris van Breugel, University of Nevada, Reno
Anna Verbe, Princeton University
Arthur Zhao, Janelia Research Campus
Austin P. Lopez, University of Nevada, Reno
Benjamin Campbell, Imperial College London
Chengyu Li, Villanova University
Elisabeth M. Steel, AFRL 711th HPW/UES Inc.
Freddie Turner, University of Bristol and University of the West of England
Geoffrey L Barrows, Centeye, Inc
Graham Taylor, University of Oxford
Alix Leroy, University of Oxford
Hari Krishna Hari Prasad, University of Colorado Boulder
Jean-Michel Mongeau, The Pennsylvania State University
Jeremy Didion, Case Western Reserve University
Kaushik Jayaram, University of Colorado Boulder
Leo Wood, Georgia Institute of Technology
Liam Fletcher, University of Bristol
Lori Schweikert, University of North Carolina Wilmington
Maitri Manjunath, National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), India
Marko Ilić, University of Ljubljana
Martha Rimniceanu, UCLA
Meenakshi Vengarai, Case Western Reserve University
Melanie Anderson, University of Washington
Michael Reiser, Janelia Research Campus
Michelle Hickner, University of Washington
Richard Bomphrey, Royal Veterinary College
Shane Windsor, University of Bristol
Simon Sponberg, Georgia Institute of Technology
Tamzeed E Elahi Toha, University of Nevada, Reno
Varun Sharma, Georgia Institute of Technology
Yu Yang, Johns Hopkins University
Marianne Alleyne, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Tutorials
Tutorial 1 (Research A/B)
Tutorial 2 (Collaboration A/B)
Thursday, March 23
10:30-12:00
Image processing/computer vision
Commercial drone and crazyflie
(limit 30 people)*
Thursday, March 23
15:00-16:30
Exploiting sparsity: compressed sensing & beyond **
Commercial drone and crazyflie
(limit 30 people)*
Friday, March 24
10:30-12:00
Applying control theory to behavioral & neural datasets **
Simple methods in computational neuroscience: feature extraction and identification
* The two Commercial drone and crazyflie workshops are identical
** Portions of these tutorials will be offered via Zoom, using the same link as the main meeting.
Tutorial descriptions and things to come prepared with:
Tutorial
Leaders
Description
Prerequisites
Come prepared with…
Image processing/ computer vision
Yash Sondhi, Ashley Estrada
A beginner’s hands on tutorial on analyzing your own behavioral videos with automated pose-estimation software like DeepLabCut. It will involve refining the model with your own video data and analyzing a test video. (Sample videos will be available if you do not have your own data)
If possible, basic command line knowledge like file system navigation and paths would be helpful, but is not essential.
Bring 2-3 short videos (<30s) of your own behavioral data if possible. Sample videos will be available.
Bring a laptop with DeepLabCut and its prerequisites (conda) installed
If you cannot install DLC on your own laptop, you can still follow along with the demo datasets, but it is highly recommended to try and install it.
Commercial drone and crazyflie
(limit 30 people per session)
Melanie Anderson,
Rui Zhou
Learn about commercial drones, communication with Betaflight flight controller, and crazyflie drones. Participants will work in groups to fly crazyflies equipped with various sensor decks or to program telemetry acquisition and controller for betaflight flight controller.
Individuals of any skill level are welcome to participate. A cursory knowledge of Python will be helpful.
Attendees will be working in groups. Each group needs at least one laptop with the following software installed. A few loaner laptops will be available.
For betaflight groups: Install the libraries instructed here.
For crazyflie groups: Install VMWare on a Windows laptop, download this Virtual Machine, unzip and open in VMWare.
Tutorial
Leaders
Description
Prerequisites
Come prepared with…
Exploiting sparsity: compressed sensing & beyond
Ali Weber
Learn about methods for efficiently extracting information from sparse data. Implement some of these methods with interactive exercises in Python
Previous experience in Python useful but not strictly necessary
Bring your laptop. We will use Google Colab to run Python entirely in the browser. (No prior installation of Python is required.)
Applying control theory to behavioral & neural datasets
Noah Cowan, Simon Sponberg, Jean-Michel Mongeau, Ben Campbell
Learn about applying the tools of control theory to biological datasets, especially neural and behavioral data. Learn how to represent your study organism in block diagram form, formulate the organism’s ‘task’, characterize the dynamics of the organism in the frequency domain, and learn the utility and limitations of these approaches as applied to biology.
A basic conceptual knowledge of Fourier transforms or other methods that represent timeseries data in the frequency domain is helpful
Bring a laptop with MATLAB or Python installed.
Bring your own data if you have it, otherwise example data will be provided.
Read the to-be-provided PDF to get started thinking about your system.
Simple methods in computational neuroscience: feature extraction and identification
Tom Daniel, Abby von Hagel
Work with real data for stimulus and spike responses to (a) find the average stimulus that generates a spike (the spike-triggered average) and (b) the nonlinear decision function that relates the probability of generating a spike given a stimulus. If time permits, we will also discuss stimulus and spike reconstruction
It would help to know what a spike (action potential) is.
Please have Python available on your laptops