Overview
Work history
Education
Skills
Academic Awards
Publications
Languages
Timeline
Generic

Dilay Fidan Ercelik

Overview

4
4
years of professional experience

Work history

SCGB UG Research Fellow in Computational Neuro.

Simons Foundation
10.2022 - 06.2024
  • Awarded a fellowship to work on a supervised research project in computational neuroscience
  • Supervisor: Dr Brendan Bicknell (UCL Häusser Lab & Gatsby Unit)
  • Project: Solving Sound Localisation using SNNs (part of the COMOB, initiative launched by Prof Dan Goodman) · GitHub repo currently private
  • Research outputs: poster for the in-person SURF Research Symposium hosted by the Simons Foundation (April 17, 2023, NYC) titled "Dendritic computations in spiking neural networks" + ongoing paper
  • Other activities: 1-month computational bootcamp · attended SNUFA 2022 conference · educational development fund to participate in the 3-week intensive Neuromatch Deep Learning course (July 2023)
  • Skills: Python · PyTorch · SNNs · SNN training (surrogate gradient descent) · literature review · biological neuron models · convolutions

SDE Intern (Full-Time)

Amazon UK (London LHR16)
07.2022 - 09.2022
  • Software Development Engineer I Intern in the Selection Contribution Platform organisation (3 months)
  • Learned about software engineering design · implemented a proof-of-concept (PoC) for an internal project sitting on the Amazon production traffic in Java (unit- & load-tested).
  • Artefacts: reviewed/merged code · technical documentations · final internal presentation to stakeholders
  • Skills: Java · Amazon Web Services · unit testing · dependency injection (Guice) · load shedding · technical writing (documentation) and presenting


AI Research Intern (Full-Time)

Imagination Technologies (Kings Langley)
07.2021 - 09.2021
  • Project: Individual research project within IMG AI Labs (3 months) on biologically plausible ANNs
  • Supervisors: James Imber, Sandra La Mantia, Tim Atherton
  • Experimented with biologically-inspired, Hebbian-like learning rules for feedforward multi-layer networks
  • Skills: PyTorch & Python for GPU-trained networks · Perforce version control · 20,000 words literature review (company material) · publicly available blog post reporting on some of my work at https://www.imaginationtech.com/blog/learning-from-the-best-how-nature-can-inspire-ai-research/

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Language & Cognition Lab (UCL Experimental Psych)
09.2020 - 05.2021
  • Coded the Ecological Language (ECOLANG) corpus collected by Prof Gabriella Viggliocco (PI): eye-gaze tracker/onomatopoeia/lexical affiliate/gesture/referent coding · manual tier alignment · word boundary correction · speech censoring/muting · reliability coding · transcription · Excel · Python scripting for automatic data preprocessing
  • Involved in the launch of the Human Simulation Paradigm study (study design, stimuli selection). Paper in process.
  • Skills: PRAAT · ELAN · Audacity · Excel · Python

Research Mentee in NLP

UCL Medical Physics & Biomedical Engineering
11.2020 - 04.2021
  • Project: "Developing a Segmentation Pipeline to Characterise and Quantify Radiomic Features of NSCLC CT Scans"
  • Worked on information extraction/retrieval in Electronic Health Records using Python, deep neural networks and NLP methods
  • Supervisor: Zihao Fang (PhD candidate)
  • Skills: Python (~3k LOC) · nltk · free-text unstructured data (data preprocessing & information extraction on EHRs) · Transformers · knowledge graphs · visualisations (word clouds, heatmaps) · literature review

Education

MSc Artificial Intelligence -

Imperial College London
09/2023 - 09/2024

MSci Psychology & Language Sciences -

University College London (UCL)
09/2019 - 06/2023

French Scientific (S) Baccalaureate -

Lycee Charles Peguy Paris (11e)
09/2016 - 06/2019

Skills

  • Python (incl OOP, numpy, pandas, scipy, matplotlib, seaborn, unit testing)
  • Machine Learning Frameworks: PyTorch, Keras, scikit-learn, Tensorflow 1
  • MATLAB & fMRI Preprocessing/Analysis (SPM12)
  • Version control with Git, GitHub
  • familiarity with: Java, Amazon Web Services (SageMaker, Lambda, API Gateway, S3, SQS), SQL, unit testing, Gym (API for reference reinforcement learning environments)
  • R & RStudio (descriptive & inferential statistics, data visualisation)
  • Machine Learning Experience: shallow and deep neural networks (feedforward, convolutional, recurrent) supervised (gradient-based) and unsupervised (Hebbian-like, clustering, PCA)
  • LaTeX (Overleaf)
  • cognitive/behavioural neuroscience experiments: Gorilla Experiment Builder (code editor task, jsPsych library), speech science software (PRAAT, ELAN, Audacity)

Academic Awards

  • The Corporate Partnership Programme MSc Group Project Prize for excellence in the Group Project on the MSc AI Programme (£50) - 2024, Imperial College London.
  • James Martin Graduate Scholarship for the first year of the 1+3 DPhil (£9,000) - 2024, Keble College (Oxford).
  • Summer Extension to the SCGB Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) in Computational Neuroscience (£6,000) - 2023, Simons Foundation & SCGB.
  • Educational Development Fund for the 3-week intensive Neuromatch Deep Learning Summer Course ($720) - 2023, Simons Foundation & SCGB.
  • SCGB Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) in Computational Neuroscience ($25/h for 10h/w during 30 weeks) - 2022-2023, Simons Foundation & SCGB.
  • Nomination for the BPS Cognitive Psychology Undergraduate Project Prize - 2022, UCL.
  • Academic Excellence Scholarship (€800) for Summer School in Human AI - 2021, VU Amsterdam.
  • UCL Faculty Undergraduate Scholarship for Excellence (£3,000) x 2 - 2020 (nominated) & 2021 (awarded), UCL.
  • Dean's List x 2 in Years 2 & 3 - 2021 & 2022, UCL.
  • Jackson Lewis Scholarship for Best Year 2 Student in the Faculty of Brain Sciences (£200) - 2021, UCL.
  • Student Achievement Prize x 3 for overall academic performance in Years 1 (£50), 3 (£100) and 4 (£100) - 2020/2022/2023, UCL.
  • Undergraduate Research Assistantship for the Language & Cognition Lab (£10/h for 1-20h/week) - 2020-2021, UCL.
  • Highest mark in the 2019 cohort and S section of the baccalaureate in my high school - 2019.

Publications

Published

  • Vellani, V., Zheng, S., Ercelik, D., & Sharot, T. (2023). The illusory truth effect leads to the spread of misinformation. Cognition, 236, 105421.
  • Ercelik, D. F., & Treur, J. (2021, September). A Controlled Adaptive Network Model for Joint Attention. In Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures Meeting (pp. 138-147). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

Blog Posts

  • Ercelik, D. F. (2021, October 4). Learning from the best: How nature can inspire AI research. Imagination Technologies Company Blog. https://www.imaginationtech.com/blog/learning-from-the-best-how-nature-can-inspire-ai-research/
  • Ercelik, D. F. (2023, April 4). What deaf people use their “auditory” brain regions for: A study of non-auditory cognition in deafness. UCL PALS Blog. https://reflect.ucl.ac.uk/pals-msci-placement-projects/2023/04/05/what_deaf_people_use_their_auditory_brain_regions_for-a_study_of_non-auditory_cognition_in_deafness/

In Progress

  • Spiking neural network models of sound localisation via a massively collaborative process [preprint] (Gosh et al., July 2024): DOI: 10.1101/2024.07.19.604252
  • Examining the effectiveness of multimodal cues using the Human Simulation Paradigm (HSP) (Khachatoorian et al., TBA)


Languages

French (Native) · Turkish (Native) · English (C1 - IELTS Band 8) · German (B1)

Timeline

SCGB UG Research Fellow in Computational Neuro.

Simons Foundation
10.2022 - 06.2024

SDE Intern (Full-Time)

Amazon UK (London LHR16)
07.2022 - 09.2022

AI Research Intern (Full-Time)

Imagination Technologies (Kings Langley)
07.2021 - 09.2021

Research Mentee in NLP

UCL Medical Physics & Biomedical Engineering
11.2020 - 04.2021

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Language & Cognition Lab (UCL Experimental Psych)
09.2020 - 05.2021

MSc Artificial Intelligence -

Imperial College London
09/2023 - 09/2024

MSci Psychology & Language Sciences -

University College London (UCL)
09/2019 - 06/2023

French Scientific (S) Baccalaureate -

Lycee Charles Peguy Paris (11e)
09/2016 - 06/2019

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Dilay Fidan Ercelik