Hung-Tu Chen

address: 6207 Moore Hall Hanover, NH 03755

Education

Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 2018 - present

PhD Candidate, Psychological and Brain Sciences

Advisor: Matthijs (Matt) van der Meer

  • Applied statistical and machine learning methods (PCA, Procrustes alignment, clustering etc.) on place cell data to study how different experiences are encoded in the hippocampal ensemble across subjects.
  • Collected and analyzed data from simultaneous in vivo electrophysiology recording in the hippocampus and fiber photometry recording in the ventral striatum.

National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan 2015

B.A., Economics

Professional Experience

Center for Computational Neuroscience, Simons Foundation, New York, NY summer 2022

NeuroStats Lab (PI: Alex Williams)
Summer Research Associate

  • Investigated conditions required to derive unique transformations between neural representations using Procrustes analysis.

New York University Shanghai, Shanghai, China 2016 - 2018

Erlich Lab (PI: Jeffery Erlich)
Research Assistant

  • Designed a sequential decision-making task for rodents and developed computational modeling of (hierarchical) reinforcement learning to fit behavioral data.

MokaHR, Bejing, China 2015 - 2016

Software Engineer

  • Developed responsive frontend features like dashboard, resume viewer, interview scheduler, performance summary and corresponding backend API service.

Publications

Li, L., Ma, C., Li, J., Chen Y., Chen, H.-T., Erlich, J.C. (submitted). Encoding of spatial location by frontal orienting field neurons.

Chen, H.-T., Manning, J. R., & van der Meer, M. A. A. (2021). Between-subject prediction reveals a shared representational geometry in the rodent hippocampus. Current Biology: CB, 31(19), 4293–4304.e5.

Talks

Between-subject prediction reveals a shared representational geometry in the rodent hippocampus. 2022

Buzsáki Lab, New York, NY.

Between-subject prediction reveals a shared representational geometry in the rodent hippocampus. 2022

Hsu Lab, Taipei, Taiwan.

Poster Presentations

Chen HT, Manning JR, van der Meer MA (2019) Shared representational geometry as an explanation for cross-subject prediction of place cell data from the rodent hippocampus. Society for Neuroscience, Chicago, IL.

Chen HT, Manning JR, van der Meer MA (2019) Between-subject prediction reveals a shared representational geometry in the rodent hippocampus. Computational and Systems Neuroscience (CoSyNe), Lisbon, Portugal.

*Rated in top 6% of abstracts over 1000 submissions

Technical Skills

Machine Learning and Data analysis: Numpy, Sklearn, Pytorch, Matplotlib
Programming Languages: Python, Matlab, R, Javascript, SQL, HTML, CSS
Web Development: React, Redux, NodeJS, ExpressJS, GraphQL
Data collection and Signal processing: In vivo electrophysiology, Fiber photometry

Honors and Awards

Neukom Prize for Outstanding Graduate Research in Computational Science 2021
Dartmouth GSC Student Professional Development Support Fund 2019
Dartmouth PBS Graduate Travel Award 2019
Uber Beijing Hachthon First Place 2016
NTHU Academic Achievement Award 2011

Teaching Experience

Neural Systems and Behavior course (TA for mouse module), Marine Biological Laboratories. summer 2021

Learning (TA), Dartmouth College spring 2021

Systems Neuroscience (Lab instructor), Dartmouth College 2019 - 2021

Methods in Neuroscience at Dartmouth Summer School (TA), Dartmouth College summer 2019

Other Experience

Neuromatch Academy Computational Neuroscience Summer School summer 2020

Attendee (Interactive track)

Methods in Neuroscience at Dartmouth Summer School summer 2018

Attendee

G0V.tw, Taiwan 2015

Open Source Contributor

  • Developed a web app called promisetw, a open source project managing to track commitments of politician and let voters rate working progresses.

Beverage Art Club, National Tsing Hua University 2012 - 2013

President

  • Oversaw 20+ staff members, managed budget, organized and supervised everyday events. Founded “Break Cafe”- a campus cafe.