Pascal Hecker

Finalizing the project of my master thesis with a potential publication.

Attending the 2 week summer school 'Data Science' in Göttingen, Germany. •Theoretical and practical introduction to the topic of ‘Data Science’. • Basics to data management, - infrastructures and - processing. • Mathematical and statistical methods.

Master thesis (grade 1.0) at the 'Applied Rehabilitation Technology Lab' with Dr. Janne Hahne and Prof. Dr. med. Hansjörg Scherberger. Title: "Muscle Coordination inspired Biofeedback for Myoelectric Control" • Providing a visual feedback scheme to improve the separability of control gestures of amputees. • Applying Linear Regression, Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) as dimensionality reduction methods.

Research project (lab rotation) at the 'Functional Imaging Laboratory' with Prof. Dr. Susann Boretius. • Introduction to the physics of NMR, operating a NMR scanner and handling subjects. • Introduction to fMRI, designing tasks and acquiring series with fMRI scans. • Batching the analysis of NMR spectroscopy data with Python.

Research project (lab rotation) at the 'Neurobiology Laboratory' with Prof. Dr. med. Hansjörg Scherberger. • In Matlab: reproduce the Izhikevich Polychronization model, a spiking neuronal network with axonal conduction delays and spike-timing-dependent plasticity. • Analyzing the dynamics of the model and comparing them with literature data towards physiological plausibility, especially zero lag synchrony.

Attending the 2 week summer school 'CAMP -Computational Approaches to Memory and Plasticity'. • Practical and theoretical lessons on the theory and simulation of learning, memory and plasticity in the brain. • Data analysis and exploration of simulated neuronal models.

DAAD sponsored internship at the 'Computational Neurobiology Lab' with Prof. Dr.Suhita Nadkarni. • Simulating the calcium dynamics of a presynapse with the software “Monte Carlo models of molecular diffusion” (MCell) to reproduce Alzheimer's. • Evaluation of the simulation data with Python to predict the distribution of calcium receptors in the cell.

For Prof. Dr. Silvio Rizzoli, in the 'STED Microscopy of Synaptic Function' group. • Molecular biological techniques: PCR, enzymatic digestions of DNA bands, purification from agarose gels, final ligations of vector and inserts, plasmid preparations (Minis and Midis), purifying proteins from E. coli with nickel affinity chromatography (His-tagged proteins, cleavage elution with SUMO protease).

Internship with the 'Molecular Neurobiology' group. • Testing new immunohistochemistry staining methods on mice brain sections in vitro. • Insights in the workflow and organisation if a big pharmaceutical company.

For Prof. Dr. Katja Liebal in the 'Comparative Developmental Psychology' department. • Literature research for the project 'GibbonFACS' (Facial Action Coding System). • Preparing photographs with Adobe Photoshop for publication in the book 'Primate Communication - A Multimodal Approach'.

Grade: 1.1; Master Thesis: 1,0; Discovering my passion for computational neuroscience and getting into Data Science and Machine Learning.

I Discovered my passion for neuroscience and pursued it further in my masters. During my bachelors, I got my first impression of industry when during an internship at Evotec, Hamburg.