About
I am a postdoc at Imperial College London working on computational neuroscience in the group of Claudia Clopath. Before this, I did my PhD at the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Intelligent Systems in Tübingen, supervised by Anna Levina.
My research focuses on the interaction between network structure and learning dynamics in biological and artificial networks. Currently, I am interested in using connectomic data to identify the inductive biases that enable efficient learning via synaptic plasticity in the olfactory system of the Drosophila.
You can download my full CV here.
Research Interests
My research interests include:
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Neuronal structures as inductive biases for synaptic plasticity: Biological neural networks are highly structured, with multiple neuron types following specific connectivity patterns. I am investigating how different structures (including network clusters, neuronal assemblies and synaptic distributions on the dendritic tree) can help learning via synaptic plasticity.
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Meta-learning plasticity rules: The brain is characterized by a great variety of learning mechanisms, acting in specific circuits over a wide range of timescales. I am interested in using machine learning techniques to identify biologically plausible learning rules that perform complex tasks in different neuronal circuits.
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Curriculum learning in RNNs: A structured learning process not only boosts performance in artificial and biological agents, but can also lead to the discovery of new solutions to complex tasks. I am studying how training curricula can drive the emergence of novel network structures and dynamics in recurrent networks performing temporal tasks
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Biological credit assignment: Neural networks need to keep track of how the activity of individual neurons affects performance in a task. I am interested in modelling biologically plausible credit assignment mechanisms in spiking neural networks, focusing on the effects of different neuromodulators.
Background
I grew up in Greece and did my undergraduate studies in mathematics at the university of Athens. After an internship with the ICOS Group in Newcastle, I studied for an MSc in Artificial Intelligence at the university of Edinburgh. Before starting my PhD in 2020, I briefly worked at Ocado Technology as a software engineer
Contact
Email : giannakakismanos[at]gmail[dot]com
Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ