Thesis/Project Final Defense Schedule
Join us as the School of STEM master鈥檚 degree candidates present their culminating thesis and project work. The schedule is updated throughout the quarter, check back for new defenses.
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Master of Science in Computer Science & Software Engineering
SUMMER 2025
Wednesday, June 25
ARJUN TANEJA
Chair: Dr. Michael Stiber
Candidate: Master of Science in Computer Science & Software Engineering
3:30 P.M.;
Project: Spatiotemporal Analysis of Neuronal Avalanches in Self-Organized Criticality
Neural spike activity forms the fundamental basis of information processing and communication in the brain, exhibiting complex spatiotemporal dynamics. Recent advances in computational neuroscience have enabled high-resolution numerical simulations of large-scale neural networks, generating spike-time and location data that capture emergent phenomena such as neuronal avalanches and whole-network bursting. In the case of neuronal avalanches, prior analysis has almost exclusively focused on temporal information, ignoring the spatial information associated with spike data. This project presents an efficient algorithm that incorporates both spatial and temporal constraints for avalanche classification, moving beyond conventional spike-train analyses. Through systematic comparison of temporal-only and spatiotemporal methods, we investigate how the inclusion of spatial information affects avalanche identification and characterization. Finally, we examine how varying spatiotemporal constraints influence the detection and properties of whole-network bursting events, providing insight into the large-scale organization of neural activity.