Katie Davey

Dr. Katie (Catherine) Davey is a Lecturer in the Biomedical Engineering Department, in the School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Melbourne. Katie's primary research areas are in functional MRI - the acquisition and analysis of a series of low resolution magnetic resonance images to understand brain function - and spike timing dependent synaptic plasticity (STDP) - the process by which connected neurons adapt connection strengths during learning.

Katie's research uses advanced signal processing methods, in conjunction with simulation and modelling techniques, to mathematically and programmatically model cortical processes and gain insight into how we perceive and process sensory information.Katie has additional collaborations, such as with Imperial College of London to investigate the encoding and storage of location information by place cells using calcium imaging, and with Florey Institute of Neurosciences in modelling the neural pathways for bowel disease. Katie completed her doctoral research in functional MRI connectivity, which is a field of research that analyses a series of low resolution MRI images to identify how brain regions cooperate to achieve sensory and perception tasks. After completing her Ph.D. Katie worked at the Defence Science Technology Organisation, modelling pilot cognition and aircraft control. She then worked in finance, modelling and predicting the movement of stock prices on the S&P500.Katie is available for student supervision, including honours, Masters, and Doctorate students. Projects will be in fMRI, neural engineering, and computational neuroscience, and will involve both numerical computation and mathematical modelling. Such projects are suited to students with an interest in mathematics.