Kohleman N. Swift

Kohleman Swift is a graduate student in medical engineering and medical physics investigating synaptic plasticity and its role in memory formation and epilepsy. Traditional electrophysiology is invasive and limited in scope; he develops optical brain-machine interfaces combining genetically encoded voltage indicators, optogenetics, and holography to enable longitudinal measurement of synaptic strength changes in behaving animals. He has built robust analytical pipelines using MATLAB to process high-speed voltage imaging data (>1 kHz sampling rates), implementing motion correction, membrane segmentation, signal extraction, and spike detection. He leverages MATLAB’s Deep Learning Toolbox and Parallel Computing Toolbox to develop neural network-based denoising modules and accelerate processing of complex optical datasets. As a MathWorks Fellow, Kohleman will expand these tools to enable high-throughput measurement of synaptic connectivity across neuronal populations and test whether endocannabinoid signaling modulation could attenuate maladaptive remodeling in epilepsy. This integrated optical-computational approach could open new avenues for investigating synaptic dysfunction, advancing our understanding of neurological disease.