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Potential mentors: Josh Siegle (@jsiegle), Jakob Voigts (@jvoigts), Aarón Cuevas López (@aacuevas)
10. Remote computing plugin
Description: The Open Ephys system allows users to record responses from up to hundreds of neurons at the same time. This can yield high-dimensional data with a rich and dynamically changing statistical structure that reflect how an animal processes sensory input, creates perception, or guides behaviour. Decoding and dimensionality reduction techniques are powerful tools to extract and visualize information carried by all recorded neurons. However, these methods are computationally expensive, often requiring more processing power than available on a typical recording computer. The goal of this project is to develop a plugin for the Open Ephys software that can send data over Ethernet to be processed in real-time on another computer (e.g., multi-processor workstation or GPU cluster). This will involve efficient transmission of user-selected data and retrieving of the data on the client side. The successful applicant will gain expertise in recent network communication architectures that form the basis for many distributed computing systems.
Skills required: Proficiency in C++, basic knowledge of network protocols, optional: basic knowledge of one or more scripting languages, e.g., Python, Matlab, or Julia (to develop example clients)
Level of difficulty: Moderate to hard
Potential mentors: Arne Meyer (UCL Gatsby Unit, London)