<html xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 15 (filtered medium)">
<style><!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:"Cambria Math";
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;}
@font-face
{font-family:Calibri;
panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{margin:0cm;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:#0563C1;
text-decoration:underline;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:#954F72;
text-decoration:underline;}
p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph
{mso-style-priority:34;
mso-margin-top-alt:auto;
margin-right:0cm;
mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;
margin-left:0cm;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;}
span.EmailStyle17
{mso-style-type:personal-compose;
font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;
color:windowtext;}
span.apple-converted-space
{mso-style-name:apple-converted-space;}
.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;}
@page WordSection1
{size:612.0pt 792.0pt;
margin:72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt 72.0pt;}
div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}
/* List Definitions */
@list l0
{mso-list-id:87315001;
mso-list-template-ids:819481618;}
@list l0:level1
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:;
mso-level-tab-stop:36.0pt;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-18.0pt;
mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Symbol;}
@list l0:level2
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:;
mso-level-tab-stop:72.0pt;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-18.0pt;
mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Symbol;}
@list l0:level3
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:;
mso-level-tab-stop:108.0pt;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-18.0pt;
mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Symbol;}
@list l0:level4
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:;
mso-level-tab-stop:144.0pt;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-18.0pt;
mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Symbol;}
@list l0:level5
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:;
mso-level-tab-stop:180.0pt;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-18.0pt;
mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Symbol;}
@list l0:level6
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:;
mso-level-tab-stop:216.0pt;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-18.0pt;
mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Symbol;}
@list l0:level7
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:;
mso-level-tab-stop:252.0pt;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-18.0pt;
mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Symbol;}
@list l0:level8
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:;
mso-level-tab-stop:288.0pt;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-18.0pt;
mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Symbol;}
@list l0:level9
{mso-level-number-format:bullet;
mso-level-text:;
mso-level-tab-stop:324.0pt;
mso-level-number-position:left;
text-indent:-18.0pt;
mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Symbol;}
ol
{margin-bottom:0cm;}
ul
{margin-bottom:0cm;}
--></style>
</head>
<body lang="EN-GB" link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72">
<div class="WordSection1">
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="color:black">The<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://ruipcosta.weebly.com/"><span style="color:#954F72">Neural and Machine Learning group</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>at the University of Bristol,
UK is looking for a PhD student to work at the intersection between computational neuroscience and machine learning (funded by a EPSRC Doctoral Training grant). We are part of the<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/engineering/research/computational-neuroscience/"><span style="color:#954F72">Bristol
Computational Neuroscience Unit</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>and are associated with the world-class neuroscience and machine learning communities at Bristol, and we also collaborate with other national and international labs. Applicants
should hold or expect to obtain a First Class or Upper Second Class Honours degree or equivalent in engineering, computer science, physics, mathematics, computational neuroscience or machine learning (or equivalent), and a strong interest in neural and biological
systems. This position is open to applicants who are <u>UK citizens</u>, or <u>EU citizens resident in the UK</u> for at least 3 years.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="color:black"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<b><span style="color:black">Project:<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span></b><i><span style="color:black">Deep temporal credit assignment with dynamic synapses</span></i><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="color:black">Successful behaviour relies on the ability of animals and machines to predict the outcome of their actions. Selecting which synapses (or parameters) to adjust to trigger the right action is a hard problem as it depends on past sensory
information. Exactly how does the brain solve such temporal credit assignment problems has remained largely enigmatic. In this project, the student will developed a novel theoretical framework to address the temporal credit assignment problem. This framework
will be compared with experimental observations and tested in machine learning tasks in collaboration with experimental neuroscientists and machine learning researchers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="color:black"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;color:black">Relevant papers:</span></b><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<ul style="margin-top:0cm;font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px" type="disc">
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="color:black;margin-top:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">
<span style="font-size:10.0pt">Llera M, Sacramento J and Costa RP -<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959438818301028"><span style="color:#954F72">Computational roles of plastic probabilistic
synapses</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>- Current Opinion in Neurobiology, Volume 54, Feb 2019</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="color:black;margin-top:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">
<span style="font-size:10.0pt">Sacramento J, Costa RP, Bengio Y and Senn W -<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://papers.nips.cc/paper/8089-dendritic-cortical-microcircuits-approximate-the-backpropagation-algorithm"><span style="color:#954F72">Dendritic
cortical microcircuits approximate the backpropagation algorithm</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>- 32nd Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2018), Montreal, Canada.</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="color:black;margin-top:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">
<span style="font-size:10.0pt">Costa RP, Assael YM, Shillingford B, Freitas N and Vogels TP -<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://papers.nips.cc/paper/6631-cortical-microcircuits-as-gated-recurrent-neural-networks"><span style="color:#954F72">Cortical
microcircuits as gated-recurrent neural networks</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>- 31st Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS 2017), Long Beach, CA, USA.</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="color:black;margin-top:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">
<span style="font-size:10.0pt">Costa RP, Froemke RC, Sjöström PJ and van Rossum MCW -<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://elifesciences.org/articles/09457"><span style="color:#954F72">Unified pre- and postsynaptic long-term plasticity
enables reliable and flexible learning</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>- eLife 2015; 10.7554/eLife.09457</span><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><o:p></o:p></span></li></ul>
<p class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-margin-top-alt:0cm;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm;margin-left:36.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="font-size:12.0pt;color:black"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<b><span style="color:black">University of Bristol:</span></b><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="color:black">The University of Bristol is a<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="https://youtu.be/fg7EbfKPo0o"><span style="color:#954F72">world-class university</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>ranked among
the top 10 universities in the UK, and top 50 in the world. The university has one of the strongest
<a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/neuroscience">neuroscience</a> and machine learning communities in the UK (e.g.: Visual Information Lab, Intelligent Systems Lab and Institute for Statistical Science). The university also runs the unique<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/neural-dynamics/"><span style="color:#954F72">Wellcome
Trust Doctoral Program in Neural Dynamics</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>with PhD students working at the intersection between theoretical and experimental neuroscience, and is associated with the Alan Turing Institute for data science
and artificial intelligence. The city itself has been ranked as the best place to live in the UK and one of the most cool destinations in the world according to National Geographic.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="color:black"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<b><span style="color:black">Details on how to apply:</span></b><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="color:black"><a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/engineering/postgraduate/funding/epsrcdta.html"><span style="color:#954F72">http://www.bristol.ac.uk/engineering/postgraduate/funding/epsrcdta.html</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="color:black">When applying online please follow the instructions in the link above and include a CV, two references and a motivation letter.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="color:black"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<b><span style="color:black">Deadline</span></b><span style="color:black">: 28<sup>th</sup><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>of February 2019<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="color:black"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="color:black"> <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white;font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;background-position:initial initial;background-repeat:initial initial;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="font-size:9.0pt;color:black">Best wishes,</span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white;font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;background-position:initial initial;background-repeat:initial initial;word-spacing:0px">
<b><span style="font-size:9.0pt;color:#444444">Rui Ponte Costa</span></b><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white;font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;background-position:initial initial;background-repeat:initial initial;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="font-size:9.0pt;color:#444444">Lecturer (Assistant professor) in Computational Neuroscience and Machine Learning</span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white;font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;background-position:initial initial;background-repeat:initial initial;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="font-size:9.0pt;color:#444444">University of Bristol, UK</span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white;font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;background-position:initial initial;background-repeat:initial initial;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="font-size:9.0pt;color:#999999">Visiting Research Scientist at University of Oxford/Bern</span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background:white;font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;background-position:initial initial;background-repeat:initial initial;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="font-size:9.0pt;color:#7C7C7C"><a href="http://ruipcosta.weebly.com"><span style="color:#7C7C7C">http://ruipcosta.weebly.com</span></a></span><span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="font-variant-caps: normal;orphans: auto;text-align:start;widows: auto;-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto;-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;word-spacing:0px">
<span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
</body>
</html>