Gabriel A. Silva

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gabriel A. Silva
CitizenshipUnited States, Canada
Known forComputational and theoretical neuroscience. Calcium and astrocyte neurobiology. Nanotechnology.
Awards (AIMBE; 2016)

American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Y.C. Fung Young Investigator Medal (2008)

Early Career Award (2007)
Academic background
Alma materUniversity of Toronto

University of Illinois at Chicago

Northwestern University
Academic advisors, Northwestern University

Jack Kessler, Northwestern University

David Pepperberg, University of Illinois at Chicago

Elizabeth Theriault, University of Toronto
Academic work
Main interestsComputational and theoretical neuroscience. Systems neuroscience. Applied mathematics. Machine learning.
Websitewww.silva.ucsd.edu

Gabriel Alejandro Silva is a theoretical and computational neuroscientist and bioengineer, Professor of Bioengineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering and Professor of Neurosciences in the School of Medicine at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). He is also the Founding Director of the Center for Engineered Natural Intelligence (CENI) at UCSD, and is a Jacobs Faculty Endowed Scholar in Engineering.

He holds additional appointments in the Department of NanoEngineering, the BioCircuits Institute, the Neurosciences Graduate Program, Computational Neurobiology Program, and Institute for Neural Computation.

Research[]

The research done by Silva and his collaborators is focused on the mathematics, physics, and engineering of structure-function dynamics in spatial-temporal geometric networks in the brain. The goal is to understand how the shape and signaling dynamics of individual neurons and astrocytes, the connectivity and geometry of networks of neurons, and networks of interacting brain regions produce algorithmic and functional properties that allow the brain to learn, compute, and process information and data.

A related goal is understanding what changes in these processes in autism spectrum disorder and related neurodevelopmental disorders. From an engineering perspective they are developing mathematical models and algorithms derived from an understanding of the biological brain to build next generation machine learning and brain machine interfaces that can learn and adapt to their environments and new data without prior training.

Early Work[]

Silva's early work during his Masters involved investigating the physiology of astrocyte neural glial cells in the spinal cord and spinal cord injury.

His Ph.D. work modeled the neurophysiology and calcium dynamics of rod photoreceptor neurons in the retina. Silva's thesis work involved electrophysiology of the retina using a method called paired-flash electroretinography, and modeling of the resultant data to understand how rod photoreceptors adapt to changing light levels.

His postdoc work at Northwestern was focused on the development and use of nanotechnologies applied to neuroscience. Specifically, Silva and his colleagues showed that neural progenitor stem cells could be induced to differentiate into neurons following the self-assembling encapsulation in peptide amphiphile nanofibers.

At UCSD[]

Silva's work at UCSD has included experimental neuroscience, theoretical and computational neuroscience, and neural engineering.

He has worked on mathematical and physical modeling and simulations of neural processes at molecular, cellular, and systems scales, for the purpose of understanding how structures in the brain represent and process information, with a particular focus on modeling the calcium signaling dynamics of astrocyte neural glial cells.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][excessive citations] He has also worked work focuses on the theoretical analysis of dynamic signaling in networks [1][2][3][5][6][9][7][excessive citations]  He has developed a new machine learning architecture that will be able to learn without prior training or exposure to data.[2][8][9]

Applied nanotechnology[]

He previous worked on the development of self assembling nanotechnologies for neural regeneration during his postdoc, and the optimization of chemically functionalized quantum dots to achieve high resolution imaging of cellular structure and calcium dynamics at UCSD.[10][11][12][13][excessive citations] Most recently, in collaboration with Nanovision Biosciences, Silva's group has been one of several labs involved in the development of a surgically implantable optoelectronic retinal neural prosthesis to restore vision[14][15][16][excessive citations] Silva's previous published work has addressed traumatic spinal cord injury and reactive gliosis, Alzheimer's disease, retinal prosthesis, and most recently the systems neuroscience of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and related neurodevelopmental disorders.[1][10][15][17][16][excessive citations]

Honors[]

Silva in 2017 he was appointed a Jacobs Faculty Endowed Scholar in Engineering, and in 2016 elected into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering....[18] In 2008 he was awarded the YC Fung Young Investigator Award and Medal by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)[19][20]

He was featured in a piece in the San Diego Tribune "A Scientist's Life: 10 Things UCSD's Gabriel Silva Has Done".[21] His work has been featured and written about in numerous news and popular science sources.[22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][excessive citations]

References[]

  1. ^ a b c Chow, S. K.; Yu, D.; MacDonald, C. L.; Buibas, M.; Silva, G. A. (2010). "SAGE Journals: Your gateway to world-class journal research". ASN Neuro. 2 (1): e00026. doi:10.1042/an20090035. PMC 2810812. PMID 20001968.
  2. ^ a b c Buibas, Marius; Silva, Gabriel A. (2010-10-21). "A Framework for Simulating and Estimating the State and Functional Topology of Complex Dynamic Geometric Networks". Neural Computation. 23 (1): 183–214. arXiv:0908.3934. doi:10.1162/NECO_a_00065. ISSN 0899-7667. PMID 20964542. S2CID 7598187.
  3. ^ a b Silva, Gabriel A.; Singer, Zakary; Lee, Ian Y.; Chow, Siu-Kei; Buibas, Marius; Yu, Diana (2009-03-01). "Characterization of Calcium-Mediated Intracellular and Intercellular Signaling in the rMC-1 Glial Cell Line". Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering. 2 (1): 144–155. doi:10.1007/s12195-008-0039-1. ISSN 1865-5033. PMC 2771886. PMID 19890481.
  4. ^ Hashemi, Mahboubeh; Buibas, Marius; Silva, Gabriel A. (2008-05-30). "Automated detection of intercellular signaling in astrocyte networks using the converging squares algorithm". Journal of Neuroscience Methods. 170 (2): 294–299. doi:10.1016/j.jneumeth.2008.01.013. ISSN 0165-0270. PMC 2637820. PMID 18328570.
  5. ^ a b Silva, Gabriel A.; Nizar, Krystal; Yu, Diana; Buibas, Marius (2010-08-01). "Mapping the Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Calcium Signaling in Cellular Neural Networks Using Optical Flow". Annals of Biomedical Engineering. 38 (8): 2520–2531. doi:10.1007/s10439-010-0005-7. ISSN 1573-9686. PMC 2900593. PMID 20300851.
  6. ^ a b Silva, Gabriel A.; MacDonald, Christopher (2013). "A positive feedback cell signaling nucleation model of astrocyte dynamics". Frontiers in Neuroengineering. 6: 4. doi:10.3389/fneng.2013.00004. ISSN 1662-6443. PMC 3706728. PMID 23847529.
  7. ^ a b MacDonald, Christopher L.; Bhattacharya, Nirupama; Sprouse, Brian P.; Silva, Gabriel A. (2015-09-15). "Efficient computation of the Grünwald–Letnikov fractional diffusion derivative using adaptive time step memory". Journal of Computational Physics. 297: 221–236. arXiv:1505.03967. Bibcode:2015JCoPh.297..221M. doi:10.1016/j.jcp.2015.04.048. ISSN 0021-9991. S2CID 31532377.
  8. ^ a b Silva, Gabriel A. (2018-04-17). "The Effect of Signaling Latencies and Node Refractory States on the Dynamics of Networks". arXiv:1804.07609 [q-bio.NC].
  9. ^ a b Buibas, Marius; Silva, Gabriel A. (2015-05-15). "Algebraic identification of the effective connectivity of constrained geometric network models of neural signaling". arXiv:1505.03964 [q-bio.NC].
  10. ^ a b Stupp, Samuel I.; Kessler, John A.; Harrington, Daniel A.; Beniash, Elia; Niece, Krista L.; Czeisler, Catherine; Silva, Gabriel A. (2004-02-27). "Selective Differentiation of Neural Progenitor Cells by High-Epitope Density Nanofibers". Science. 303 (5662): 1352–1355. Bibcode:2004Sci...303.1352S. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.1012.1883. doi:10.1126/science.1093783. ISSN 1095-9203. PMID 14739465. S2CID 6713941.
  11. ^ Silva, Gabriel A. (2009-08-01), "Neuroscience nanotechnology: Progress, opportunities and challenges", Nanoscience and Technology, Co-Published with Macmillan Publishers Ltd, UK, pp. 251–260, doi:10.1142/9789814287005_0026, ISBN 9789814282680
  12. ^ Silva, Gabriel A. (2004-03-01). "Introduction to nanotechnology and its applications to medicine". Surgical Neurology. 61 (3): 216–220. doi:10.1016/j.surneu.2003.09.036. ISSN 0090-3019. PMID 14984987.
  13. ^ Silva, Gabriel A. (2008-12-10). "Nanotechnology approaches to crossing the blood-brain barrier and drug delivery to the CNS". BMC Neuroscience. 9 (3): S4. doi:10.1186/1471-2202-9-S3-S4. ISSN 1471-2202. PMC 2604882. PMID 19091001.
  14. ^ Kotov, Nicholas A.; Winter, Jessica O.; Clements, Isaac P.; Jan, Edward; Timko, Brian P.; Campidelli, Stéphane; Pathak, Smita; Mazzatenta, Andrea; Lieber, Charles M. (2009). "Nanomaterials for Neural Interfaces". Advanced Materials. 21 (40): 3970–4004. doi:10.1002/adma.200801984. hdl:2027.42/64336. ISSN 1521-4095.
  15. ^ a b Mojana, Francesca; Cheng, Lingyun; Bartsch, Dirk-Uwe G.; Silva, Gabriel A.; Kozak, Igor; Nigam, Nitin; Freeman, William R. (2008-08-01). "The Role of Abnormal Vitreomacular Adhesion in Age-related Macular Degeneration: Spectral Optical Coherence Tomography and Surgical Results". American Journal of Ophthalmology. 146 (2): 218–227.e1. doi:10.1016/j.ajo.2008.04.027. ISSN 0002-9394. PMC 2735863. PMID 18538742.
  16. ^ a b Silva, Gabriel A.; Jin, Sungho; Davidson, Marie C.; Cao, Elizabeth; Pathak, Smita (2006-02-15). "Quantum Dot Applications to Neuroscience: New Tools for Probing Neurons and Glia". Journal of Neuroscience. 26 (7): 1893–1895. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3847-05.2006. ISSN 1529-2401. PMC 6674918. PMID 16481420.
  17. ^ Silva, Gabriel A. (2007-02-01). "Nanotechnology approaches for drug and small molecule delivery across the blood brain barrier". Surgical Neurology. 67 (2): 113–116. doi:10.1016/j.surneu.2006.08.033. ISSN 0090-3019. PMID 17254859.
  18. ^ "Gabriel Silva Gabriel A. Silva, Ph.D. To be Inducted into Medical and Biological Engineering Elite - AIMBE".
  19. ^ "Prof. Silva awarded YC Fung young investigator award and medal". Mathematical Neuroscience Lab.
  20. ^ "Y.C. Fung Early Career Award". cdn.asme.org.
  21. ^ "A scientist's life: 10 things UCSD's Gabriel Silva has done". Mathematical Neuroscience Lab.
  22. ^ "Catching calcium waves could provide Alzheimer's insights". ScienceDaily.
  23. ^ "Self-assembling scaffold for spinal-cord repair: 'Liquid' bridge could help severed nerve cells grow". June 6, 2004. Archived from the original on 2004-06-06.
  24. ^ https://web.archive.org/we
  25. ^ "Catching calcium waves could provide Alzheimer's insights" – via www.eurekalert.org.
  26. ^ b/20040605102614/http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/01/22/neurons040122
  27. ^ Abbott, Alison (August 1, 2003). "Biology's new dimension". Nature. 424 (6951): 870–872. doi:10.1038/424870a. PMID 12931155. S2CID 2615150 – via www.nature.com.
  28. ^ Service, Robert F. (October 3, 2003). "Molecular Scaffolding Helps Raise a Crop of Neurons". Science. 302 (5642): 46–47. doi:10.1126/science.302.5642.46. PMID 14526056. S2CID 10729839 – via science.sciencemag.org.
  29. ^ NU stem-cell gel advances spinal injury research
Retrieved from ""