Dr Mat Evans Computational Neuroscientist

Hello!

I'm interested in neural computation, broadly defined. Currently I'm a Postdoc studying Robot Navigation at the University of Sheffield, UK.

I am interested in the computational principles underlying simple cognitive processes such as sensation, perception, navigation, action and decision making. I feel that understanding how (relatively) simple brains encode and act upon the world is our best chance of progress in Neuroscience. I strongly believe that computational and statistical methods - in particular the automation of data processing tasks with machine learning, for example, using machine vision tools for behavioural analysis - can provide step-changes in our ability to understand the brain. I also believe in studying simple systems operating under simple conditions with as much experimental precision as possible. For these reasons my current research is focussed on understanding the computational principles of simple navigation behaviours by developing and testing algorithms for visual odometry, localization and mapping for small, sensor-deprived robots on the Pipebots project, working with Sean Anderson (ACSE, Sheffield).

Previous Research

My PhD and early postdoc years were earned with Prof. Tony Prescott in Sheffield. As a member of Sheffield Robotics (formerly Sheffield Centre for Robotics, ScentRO), Active Touch Laboratory at Sheffield (ATL@S), Adaptive Behaviour Research Group (ABRG), EU grants BIOTACT, WYSIWYD and EFAA I developed models of whisker based tactile perception, and robot technologies based on the rodent whisker system. I also worked on a project (and patent) to develop a sensory augmentation device for providing distal touch information to the visually impaired (some details on this, and the whisker work, can be seen on a BBC Look North video here). In 2012 I was awarded an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellowship from the University of Sheffield (£50K).

• Whisker robot media coverage links: Times (London), Telegraph, Guardian, CBBC Newsround, Metro.

• Crowdstorming analysis media coverage links: fivethirtyeight, Nature, Sense about Science USA.

Education

• PhD Computational Neuroscience and Robotics, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK. Awarded 2012.
  Supervisors: Prof. Tony Prescott, Dr. Charles Fox
  Examiners: Dr Yiannis Demiris (Imperial College, London), Prof. John Porrill (University of Sheffield, now retired) (pdf)
• MSc Computational and Systems Neuroscience, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, 2007.
• BSc (Hons.) Psychology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK, 2004.
• Barcelona cognition, brain and technology summer school (BCBT), Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain, September 7-18, 2009.
• Cognitive Science and Machine Learning Summer School (MLSS), Sardegna Ricerche, Pula, Sardinina, Italy, May 6-12 2010.
• Gaussian Process Summer School (GPSS), University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK. January 13-16th 2014.

Publications

• Petersen, R. S.*, Rodriguez, A. C.*, Evans, M. H., Campagner, D., and Loft, M. S. A system for tracking whisker kinematics and whisker shape in three dimensions. PLoS Computational Biology, 16(1), e1007402. 2020. Link. (* joint first authors).


• Evans, M. H., Petersen, R. S., and Humphries, M. D. On the use of calcium deconvolution algorithms in practical contexts. bioRxiv, 871137. 2019. Link.


• Campagner, D.*, Evans, M. H.*, Chlebikova, K., Colins-Rodriquez, A., Loft, M. S. E., Fox, S., Pettier, D., Humphries, M. D., Svoboda, K., and Petersen, R. S. Prediction of choice from competing mechanosensory and choice-memory cues during active tactile decision making. Journal of Neuroscience. 15 May 2019, 39 (20) 3921-3933. Link * joint first authors).


• Humphries, M. D., Caballero, J. A.*, Evans, M.H.*, Maggi, S.*, and Singh, A.* Spectral rejection for testing hypotheses of structure in networks. arXiv preprint. arXiv:1901.04747. 2019. Link. (* equal contribution).


• Silberzahn R.,Uhlmann E. L., Martin D. P., Anselmi P., Aust F., Awtrey E., Bahník Š., Bai F., Bannard C., Bonnier E., Carlsson R., Cheung F., Christensen G., Clay R., Craig M. A., Dalla Rosa A., Dam L., Evans M. H., Flores Cervantes I., Fong N., Gamez-Djokic M., Glenz A., Gordon-McKeon S., Heaton T. J., Hederos Eriksson K., Heene M., Hofelich Mohr A. J., Högden F., Hui K., Johannesson M., Kalodimos J., Kaszubowski E., Kennedy D.M., Lei R., Lindsay T. A., Liverani S., Madan C. R., Molden D., Molleman E., Morey R. D., Mulder L. B., Nijstad B. R., Pope N. G., Pope B., Prenoveau J. M., Rink F., Robusto E., Roderique H., Sandberg A., Schlüter E., Schönbrodt F. D., Sherman M. F., Sommer S.A., Sotak K., Spain S., Spörlein C., Stafford T., Stefanutti L., Tauber S., Ullrich J., Vianello M., Wagenmakers E.-J., Witkowiak M., Yoon S., and Nosek B. A. Many analysts, one dataset: Making transparent how variations in analytical choices affect results. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science. 2018. DOI. Preprint, data and interactive visualisation available at the Open Science Framework. Direct links to an interactive visualisation of the data that found important confounds in the data: mybinder.org, Github Media coverage: fivethirtyeight, Nature, Sense about Science USA.


• Campagner, D., Evans, M. H., Loft, M. S. E. and Petersen, R. S. What the whiskers tell the brain. Neuroscience, 368, 95-108. 2018. Link. Preprint


• Evans, M.H., and Brumberg, J. C. Barrels XXIX: Barrels go Hollywood. Somatosensory and Motor Research, 34(1), 58-64. 2017. Link. Preprint


• Martinez-Hernandez, M., Dodd, T. J., Evans, M. H., Prescott, T. J., and Lepora, N.F. Active sensorimotor control for tactile exploration. Robotics and Autonomous Systems 87, 15-27. 2017. Link, Preprint


• Freeman, O. J., Evans, M. H., Cooper, G. J., Petersen, R. S., and Gardiner, N. J. Thalamic amplification of sensory input in experimental diabetes. European Journal of Neuroscience, 44(1), 1779-1786. 2016.Link (open access), Preprint


• Campagner, D., Evans, M. H., Bale, M. R., Erskine, A., and Petersen, R. S. Prediction of primary somatosensory neuron activity during active tactile exploration. eLife, 5, e10696. 2016. Link (open access)


• Lepora, N. F., Martinez-Hernandez, U., Evans, M. H., Natale, L., Metta, G., and Prescott, T. J. Tactile superresolution and biomimetic hyperacuity. IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 31(3), 605-618, 2015. Preprint


• Evans, M.H., Fox, C.W., and Prescott, T.J. Machines learning - towards a new synthetic autobiographical memory. In Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, pp. 84-96. Springer, Cham, 2014. Preprint


• Bertram, C., Evans, M.H., Javaid, M., Stafford, T. and Prescott, T.J. Sensory Augmentation with Distal Touch: The Tactile Helmet Project. In Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, pp. 24-35. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2013. Preprint


• Evans, M.H., Fox, C.W., Lepora, N.F., Pearson, M.J., Sullivan, J.C., and Prescott, T.J. The effect of whisker movement on radial distance estimation: a case study in comparative robotics. Frontiers in Neurorobotics. 6:12. 2013. Link (open access). Preprint


• Evans, M.H., Pearson, M.J, Lepora, N.F, Prescott, T.J and Fox, C.W. Whiskered texture classification with uncertain pose geometry Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 7-13, 2012. Preprint


• Lepora, N., Martinez, U., Barron, H., Evans, M.H., Metta, G. and Prescott, T. Embodied hyperacuity from Bayesian perception: Shape and position discrimination with an iCub fingertip. Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 4638-4643, 2012. Preprint


• Fox, C.W.*, Evans, M.H.*, Pearson, M.J. and Prescott, T. Towards hierarchical blackboard mapping on a whiskered robot. Robotics and Autonomous Systems, 60 (11), 1356--1366. 2012. (* joint first authorship). Link. Preprint


• Lepora, N., Fox, C., Evans, M.H., Diamond, M., Gurney, K. and Prescott, T. Optimal decision-making in mammals: insights from a robot study of rodent texture discrimination. Royal Society Interface, 9 (72), 1517--1528. 2012. Link. pdf


• Fox, C., Evans, M.H., Pearson, M. and Prescott, T. Tactile SLAM with a biomimetic whiskered robot. Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2012. (preprint)


• Evans, M.H. Tactile Discrimination with Whiskers. PhD Thesis, University of Sheffield, 2012. (link). (pdf)


• Lepora, N., Fox, C., Evans, M.H., Mitchinson, B., Motiwala, A., Sullivan, C., Pearson, M.; Welsby, J., Pipe, T., Gurney, K. and Prescott, T. A General Classifier of Whisker Data using Stationary Naive Bayes: Application to BIOTACT Robots. Proceedings of Towards Autonomous Robots, (TAROS), Springer, 2011. (link). (pdf)



• Sullivan, J., Mitchinson, B., Pearson, M., Evans, M.H., Lepora, N.F. Fox, C., Melhuish, C., and Prescott, T.J. Tactile Discrimination using Active Whisker Sensors, IEEE Sensors Journal, 2011. (Cover article, right) (link). (pdf)


• Evans, M.H., Fox, C.W., Pearson, M.J., Lepora, N.F., Prescott, T.J. Whisker-object contact speed affects radial distance estimation. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO), 2010. (link). (pdf)


• Lepora, N.F., Evans, M.H., Fox, C.W., Pearson, M.J., and Prescott, T.J. Naive Bayes novelty detection for a moving robot with whiskers. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics (ROBIO), 2010. (link). (pdf)


• Evans, M.H., Fox, C.W., and Prescott, T.J. Tactile discrimination using template classifiers: Towards a model of feature extraction in mammalian vibrissal systems. Proceedings of From Animals to Animats 11, 11th International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behaviour, (SAB), 2010, p178-187. (link). (pdf)


• Lepora, N.F., Evans, M.H., Fox, C.W., Diamond, M., Prescott, T. and Gurney, K. Naive Bayes texture classification applied to whisker data from a moving robot. IEEE Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), 2010. (link). (pdf)


• Prescott, T., Pearson, M., Fox, C., Evans, M.H., Mitchinson, B., Anderson, S. and Pipe, T. Towards biomimetic vibrissal tactile sensing for robot exploration, navigation and object recognition in hazardous environments. Proceedings Robotics for Risky Interventions and Environmental Surveillance (RISE), 2010. (pdf)


• Evans, M.H., Fox, C.W., Pearson, M.J., Prescott, T.J. Spectral template based classification of robotic whisker sensor signals in a floor texture discrimination task. Proceedings of Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems (TAROS)., 2009, p19-24. (pdf)


• Fox, C., Evans, M.H., Stone, J. and Prescott, T. Towards Temporal Inference for Shape Recognition from Whiskers. Proceedings of Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems (TAROS)., 2008. (pdf)

Posters and Abstracts (quite possibly an incomplete list)

• Loft, M.S., Evans, M.H., Fox, S., and Petersen, R.S. DA new dimension in multiple whisker tracking: imaging and tracking whisking behaviour in 3D. In Society for Neuroscience Abstacts (2016, Program No. 149.07/FF9).

• Evans, M.H., Campagner, D. Fox,, S., Chlebikova, K., Pettifer, D., Humphries, M.D., Svoboda, K., and Petersen, R.S. Diverse strategies underlying active tactile discrimination in head-fixed mice: a novel, three-choice object localisation task. In Society for Neuroscience Abstacts (2016, Program No. 149.08/FF10).

• Campagner, D., Evans, M. H., Bale, M. R., Erskine, A., and Petersen, R. S. The somatosensory input to the brain during active sensation in awake mice. In Society for Neuroscience Abstacts (2015, Program No. 156.03/O15). Also selected for a talk at the Barrels satellite meeting.

• Campagner, D., Evans, M. H., Bale, M. R., Erskine, A., and Petersen, R. S. Input to the brain during active sensation cannot be predicted from passive stimulation: Study of whisker system of awake, behaving mice. BNA 2015 Festival of Neuroscience, Edinburgh, UK.

• Evans, M.H. and Prescott T.J. Efficient and sparse coding in the whisker system. Society for Neuroscience (2013) San Diego. Selected for a talk at the Barrels 2013 satelite conference.

• Evans, M.H. Efficient coding in the whisker system: biomimetic pre-processing for robots? In Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, pp. 364-367. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2013. (preprint)

• Evans, M.H. Sparse somatosensory coding: towards explaining and predicting the response properties of rodent afferent pathway neurons. BMC Neuroscience, 14(1), P127. (preprint)

• Lepora, N., Martinez-Hernandez, U., Evans, M.H., Natale, L., Metta, G. and Prescott, T. Embodied hyperacuity for robot touch. ICRA workshop on tactile sensing, 2013.(preprint)

• Grasso, F.W., Evans, M.H., Basil, J., and Prescott. T.J. (2012). Toward a fusion model of feature and spatial tactile memory in the Australian crayfish Cherax destructor. In Society for Neuroscience Abstracts. Society for Neuroscience (Program No. 922.01/EEE56). (link)

• Grasso, F.W., Evans, M.H., Basil, J., and Prescott. T.J. (2012). Toward a fusion model of feature and spatial tactile memory in the crayfish Cherax destructor. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (Living Machines), Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, 352-354, 2012. (link)

• Martinez, U., Barron, H., Evans, M., Lepora, N., Dodd, T. and Prescott, T.J. (2012). Texture classification through tactile sensing. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (Living Machines), Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, 377-379, 2012. (link)

• Barron, H., Lepora, N., Martinez, U., Evans, M. and Prescott, T.J. (2012). Towards a framework for tactile perception in social robotics. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (Living Machines), Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, 335-336, 2012. (link)

• Evans, M., Fox, C.W., Pearson, M.J., Prescott, T.J. (2009). Object location, orientation, and velocity extraction from artificial vibrissal signals. In Society for Neuroscience Abstracts. Society for Neuroscience (Program No. 174.8/ Z12). (link)

• Evans, M., Fox, C.W., Pearson, M.J., Prescott, T.J. (2008). Radial distance to contact estimation from dynamic robot whisker information. In Barrels XXI (SfN Satellite Meeting), 2008. (doi)

• Fox, C.W., Evans, M., Prescott, T.J. (2008). Template-based classification of whisker contact edge orientation and radial distance in a simulated mobile robot. In Barrels XXI (SfN Satellite Meeting), 2008. (doi)

Extra curricular

I am a proud Father, Husband and Welshman. I'm a first-language Welsh speaker. In my spare time I like to cycle. I have been known to swim and compete in the odd triathlon. I am a lapsed bmxer. My more transient interests can be followed on twitter