Bozeman Magazine

Catherine Potts, a doctoral student in the Montana State University Department of Mathematical Sciences and recipient of a 2020 Kopriva Graduate Student Fellowship, will present "Archetypal Analysis Applied to Neuronal Cellular Signaling" as part of the College of Letters and Science's Kopriva Science Seminar Series. The virtual lecture will be presented via Webex on Thursday, April 15, from 3:10 to 4 p.m.

Potts, who is advised by assistant professor in applied mathematics Dominique Zosso, studies the development of machine learning and data science techniques for biomedical image analysis applications in the Kunze Neuroengineering Researching Laboratory, headed by Anja Kunze, an assistant professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department in the Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering.

Understanding how neurons communicate with each other in the brain and any effects nanoparticles may have on neuronal communication is of great interest for biomedicine, according to Potts. Calcium signals act as a messenger and regulate processes within the neuron. However, most analysis methods focus on how calcium behaves within neurons, not the interactions between neurons. As the focus of her ongoing dissertation work, Potts has been working on adapting a machine learning analysis method, called archetypal analysis, to image calcium in neurons and capture these interactions.

In this talk, Potts will discuss her research and examine archetypal analysis as a machine learning model, covering the geometric interpretation of its computational elements and comparing it to other machine learning methods such as principal component analysis using an image processing database.

Potts was in the first group of fellows in the MT PEAKS program, which equips students in math and statistics to pursue career paths beyond the traditional academic track. And she is a co-founder and director of Rocky Mountain Data Science, an MSU club that offers data science workshops to the MSU community.

Potts’ lecture will be presented via Webex at https://montana.webex.com/montana/j.php?MTID=m531fdcd5c47cd1bca9d24bf91a92a642.

For more information on the Kopriva Science Seminar Series and Kopriva Graduate Fellowship Program, visit www.montana.edu/lettersandscience/kopriva/.