Angela Onslow

Hey everyone!

Apologies it's taken me so long to post my info!

I'm just beginning my PhD at the University of Bristol, U.K. I'm looking at whether oscillations between two different areas of the brain become correlated during decision making which involves using spatial awareness and goal orientated behaviour and possible models of such a process. My goal is to understand more about complex systems and in particular cognition. Outside of my academic work I love music (lots of different stuff, too much to list) and dancing and pretty much any creative pursuits, I like to read (when I get time which is not often!), I like going to music festivals, I'm up for some hiking but I don't really have much experience so may not be able to keep up with most of you from the sounds of it! I'm really looking forward to meeting you all!

Questions:

1. What are your main interests? Feel free to include a "pie in the sky" big idea! The focus of my PhD is on decision making in rodents arising in possibly an emergent way from the interaction of groups of neurons which are firing in an oscillatory fashion so I am particularly interested in ways of modelling emergent behaviour in complex systems such as agent based modelling, cellular automata, network dynamics..... it's these sort of concepts and tools I want to learn about at the CSSS and take away with me but I'm happy to learn via another application not just neuroscience based projects. I've had some experience looking at protein interactions and agent based modelling of financial markets so I'd be interested in looking more at these applications in particular but in general I'm interested in the theory of complex systems regardless of the specifics

2. What sorts of expertise can you bring to the group? I have to admit that my academic career up until now has made me feel more of a jack of all trades and master of none and I'm just beginning my PhD so I can't imagine I have alot of expertise that will be useful to the other participants, I have experience with Perl, C, R and Matlab but only what I have picked up specifically for past projects. I know some basic tools of signal processing which has the been the focus of the first few months of my PhD.

3. What do you hope to get out of the CSSS? I really want to come away with a deeper understanding or at least having thought more about the concepts of emergent behaviour and ways of modelling complex systems. I'd like to have some original and neat ideas about models I can make to investigate the complex system I'm focusing on for my PhD studies. I also can't wait to meet all the participants as I'm sure I going to learn so much from them and hopefully establish links with them and the Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences which is where I study back home in the U.K.

4. Do you have any possible projects in mind for the CSSS? I'm afraid I don't have any fully formed ideas for projects yet but I'm really looking forward to discussing ideas with other participants.