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Assistant Professor of Physics THE BIOLOGICAL PHYSICIST The Newsletter of the Division of Biological Physics of the American Physical Society Vol 5 No 4 October 2005 DIVISION OF BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Chair Peter Jung In this Issue [email protected] Immediate Past Chair FEATURE Denis Rousseau [email protected] A Conversation with Mal Teich S. Bahar…………………………………………….…....….......2 Chair-Elect Marilyn Gunner [email protected] ANNOUNCEMENT Biological Physics Prize Awarded to A. G. Redfield….…...6 Vice-Chair Dean Astumian MARCH MEETING UPDATE [email protected] 2006 March Meeting Symposium Schedule………………...7 Secretary/Treasurer Put Capitol Hill on your 2006 March Meeting Itinerary!.. ..8 Shirley Chan [email protected] PRE HIGHLIGHTS……………………………………….….…….9 APS Councillor Robert Eisenberg JOB ADS…………………..…………………………….…..…..12 [email protected] At-Large Members: MARCH MEETING SUPPLEMENT Ka Yee C. Lee List of DBP Symposia, Focus Sessions, [email protected] and Invited Speakers....………………….…..follows page 16 Herbert Levine [email protected] Lois Pollack [email protected] This issue of THE BIOLOGICAL PHYSICIST Stephen Quake brings you a feature interview with Boston University’s Mal [email protected] Teich, who has recently published, with co-author Steve Stephen J. Hagen Lowen, a new book on Fractal-Based Point Processes [email protected] (Wiley 2005). Chao Tang [email protected] We also bring you the announcement of the winner of Newsletter Editor the Biological Physics Prize, important information about the Sonya Bahar upcoming March Meeting, including a listing of all [email protected] Symposia and Focus Sessions, and a tentative schedule of Website Coordinator Symposia. (Remember that the abstract submission Andrea Markelz deadline is Wednesday November 30!) Finally, we bring [email protected] you PRE Highlights, and a plentiful batch of job ads, as the Website Assistant fall academic hiring season gets into full swing. Enjoy! Lois Pollack [email protected] -- SB 1 FEATURE A Conversation with Mal Teich *** S. Bahar Malvin Carl Teich is a faculty member at electron from the material, a single photon Boston University, where he holds joint having insufficient energy to do so. The appointments in the Departments of Electrical probability of a pair of photons being localized and Computer Engineering, Physics, and at a point in the material is determined by the Biomedical Engineering. He is Co-Director of point process representing the photon arrivals the Quantum Imaging Laboratory and a of the laser light. In subsequent years, as a Member of the Photonics Center, the Hearing faculty member at Columbia working with my Research Center, the Program in own PhD students, I carried out many Neuroscience, and the Center for Adaptive experimental and theoretical studies in Systems. He is also Professor Emeritus of photonics that involved point processes, Engineering Science and Applied Physics at including the generation of photon-number Columbia University. His well-known research squeezed light, the transformation of photon achievements extend from the development of statistics imparted by fiber-optic amplifiers, nonlinear heterodyne detection to the role of and the analysis of noise in avalanche point processes in the neurosciences. He spoke photodiodes. recently with THE BIOLOGICAL PHYSICIST about his research and his latest In the "About the Authors" section of the book, Fractal-Based Point Processes, co- new book, one reads that "Teich's interest authored with Steven Bradley Lowen and in point processes in the neurosciences was published in 2005 by Wiley. fostered by a chance encounter in 1974 with William J. McGill, then Professor of THE BIOLOGICAL PHYSICIST: What Psychology and President of Columbia got you interested in point processes? Was University." Describe that "chance your interest initially generated by your encounter". What exactly did you talk work in engineering and photonics? about with McGill? Mal Teich: My interest in point processes One spring day in 1974, out of curiosity I began with the work I carried out for my ambled over to the Columbia Faculty House to doctoral dissertation at Cornell in the mid hear what the President of the University, a 1960s. With the advent of the laser a few years mathematical psychologist named William J. earlier, nonlinear optics had become an area of McGill, had to say in a lecture entitled Signal great interest in physics. My PhD thesis Detection Theory. He was presenting a talk at centered on observing two-photon the University Seminar on Mathematical photoemission from a metal (sodium) Methods in the Social Sciences. I had never illuminated by laser light. This process occurs met McGill but the title of his talk intrigued when two photons conspire to release an me and, after all, he was the President of the 2 University. In his talk, he suggested that mammalian peripheral auditory system, using Poisson-based stochastic point processes were a broad range of different auditory stimuli. suitable for modeling information flow in the Point-process theory offered an excellent human auditory and visual systems. I was platform for studying these spike trains. After astonished by his talk because the neural-event analyzing an enormous number of data sets, probability distributions and generation over quite a number of years, we reached the functions that he presented were identical to unexpected, but unmistakable, conclusion that, those that I had used to describe laser-light photodetection. I mentioned this to him in the open discussion following the talk, and he suggested that I come over to his office to chat. We talked for the remainder of the afternoon, and that was the beginning of a lifelong collaboration on the use of stochastic point processes in sensory-system modeling. We ultimately constructed an information- transmission model in which the brain's neural network amplifies an incoming sensory stimulus. Without intending to do so, we arrived at a model for characterizing the flow of neural events that was identical to the model I had used earlier to describe the transformation of the statistical properties of photons imparted by a fiber-optic amplifier. Here were two distinct phenomena, one in physics and one in biology, described by an identical underlying point-process model. How did you become interested in biological physics? At what point did you begin to think about point processes in biophysical systems? My work with McGill was directed principally The cover of Mal Teich and Steve Lowen’s new toward developing systems models for sensory book, Fractal-Based Point Processes, published by detection. I was also anxious to see if it might Wiley. For more information about the book, visit: http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471383767.html. or be productive to apply a point-process http://cordelia.mclean.org/~lowen/fbpp.html. approach to a living neural system at the cellular level. Fortunately, not too long after I met McGill, I encountered Shyam M. Khanna, without exception, action-potential sequences Director of the Fowler Memorial Laboratory in the auditory system exhibited power-law for Auditory Biophysics and Professor in the correlations and other features characteristic of Department of Otolaryngology at the fractal behavior. Together with my PhD Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons. students, including Steve Lowen, the co-author In a collaboration that stretched over two of Fractal-Based Point Processes, I developed decades, we recorded sequences of action a fractal-based point-process model that potentials from afferent nerve fibers in the 3 captured the characteristics of these data, and managed to deliver a preliminary manuscript revealed a new feature of neural coding. in 2001, but it was not until 2005 that we completed the final camera-ready manuscript What led you to write "Fractal-Based Point that made it into print. Processes"? Describe the genesis of the book and the process of writing it. What is The book is addressed principally to students the intended audience and what do you and researchers in the physical, biological, hope the audience will take away from it? mathematical, and medical sciences who seek to understand, explain, and make use of the Having observed that all primary auditory- ever-growing roster of phenomena that are nerve spike trains exhibited fractal behavior, found to exhibit fractal and point-process Lowen and I began to wonder whether other characteristics. An extensive set of solved neural and neurobiological systems would problems accompanies each chapter. The behave similarly. So, in collaboration with website for the book contains the data sets colleagues at a number of institutions, we analyzed as well the source code for all C proceeded to examine action-potential programs used to analyze, simulate, and sequences recorded from the retina, thalamus, modify the data sets. and visual cortex; neurotransmitter exocytosis at the synapse; and human heartbeat Is there a fundamental difference between sequences. Making use of point-process point processes which do and which do not theory, we discovered the presence of fractal possess fractal characteristics? behavior in all of these systems as well. Fractal-based point processes are a particular Fractal behavior turned out to be so class of point processes, comprising two widespread in the systems we examined that subclasses: fractal point processes and fractal- we decided to develop a comprehensive theory rate point processes. By virtue of
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