Amrita faculty member, Mr. Shyam Diwakar, Director, Computational Neuroscience and Neurophysiology, and Associate Professor at Amrita School of Biotechnology, was invited to give talks at IIT Hyderabad and IIT Madras on August 17^th and 23^rd August, 2017.

Invited by Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad professor Mr. Mohan Raghavan on 17^th August, 2017, Dr. Shyam Diwakar spoke on “Computational Neuroscience of Cerebellum: Cellular and Circuit Roles, Timing and Plasticity”. The talk was attended by PhD students, undergraduates, postgraduates and professors.

Prof. Srinivasa Chakravarthy, Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, invited Dr. Shyam Diwakar to address his department on, “Computations and Cerebellum: Modeling Cerebellar Neurons and Their Behavioral Dynamics”, on 23rd August, 2017. The focus was on computational principles on the cerebellum and its computations. This was also a follow-up visit after Prof. Srinivasa Chakravarthy had visited Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham in July. After the talk, Dr. Shyam Diwakar also visited Prof. SKM Varadhan’s Neuromechanics Lab at Department of Applied Mechanics at IIT Madras. During the visit, recent explorations in studying skilled human movement was discussed.

Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham’s Computational Neuroscience and Neurophysiology Laboratory has been working on detailed modeling of neural cells and circuits that define motor coordination and fine tuning and have been looking into using models for neurological predictions and for robotics.