Nathan Dees
Nathan Dees is working in conjunction with researchers at Washington University's Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology searching for one of the holy grails of neuroimaging - combining the spectacular spatial resolution of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) with the equally spectacular time resolution of Electroencephalography (EEG). Through rational forethought and careful programming (using Matlab, C, etc.), he employs many linear and nonlinear measures to look for revealing connections between simultaneously recorded datasets.
Nathan has also submitted a request to the Institutional Review Board at Saint Louis University Hospital (SLUH) to employ similar techniques in the evaluation of Magnetoencephalographic (MEG) recordings of interictal epileptic activity. SLUH's MEG machine, installed in August of 2006, is the first such unit in the state of Missouri. In a research team of neurologists and other clinicians, Nathan will be doing data analysis.
Finally, Nathan also is interested in the development of computational models of species evolution. He has teamed up with the renowned Frank Moss to complete a study of the food foraging habits of the zooplankton, Daphnia, and next will be working on the evolution of the hop-pause-turn-hop sequence in which they move during this feeding.