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DR. MICHAEL S. CLAYTON




ABOUT ME

I'm a neuroscientist and programmer based in Cambridge, UK.

Working in the lab of Marta Zlatic at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, I study the small brains of fly larvae, focusing on the neural circuits of memory and action selection.

I am a computational scientist with a strong background in software engineering, neural circuits analysis, and data analysis.

Core skills:

Neural circuits, Python, Computational modelling, High-performance computing

EXPERIENCE

MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (Neurobiology)

October 2020 - Current

Post-doctoral Scientist - Zlatic lab

  • Created pipelines for preprocessing and analysing functional imaging data recorded from every neuron in the larval nervous system (collected using light- sheet fluorescence microscopy). See example video here
  • Developed hardware for automatically tracking fruit fly larvae and delivering heat and light in order to stimulate genetically-targeted neurons
  • Designed connectome-constrained computational models of neural circuits involved in learning and memory
  • Developed parallelised big-data analysis pipelines on the LMB supercomputer using Dask and SLURM

Unit 9 & Ford

January 2019 - October 2020

Consultant Data Scientist

  • Led the analysis of EEG, video, and GPS data on a project with Ford, focused on tracking the mental states of drivers during competitive racing
  • Collaborated with scientific and machine learning teams to create automated systems for classifying driving errors and their associated mental states
  • Click here to visit the Unit 9 website for the project.

Cambridge Cognition

April 2018 - May 2019

Science Intern and Research Engineer

  • Worked on designing platforms to record and analyse voice data for detection of pain using machine learning techniques (see link for project description).
  • Led the process of deploying this software on Amazon Web Services, using Docker and Kubernetes. Also worked on hardware projects using Raspberry Pi devices.
  • Designed and developed human cognition tests for online studies (using front-end web technologies).
  • Used Mechanical Turk and Prolific Academic to study these tests rapidly and at scale (i.e. n>100 study samples collected within a few hours), and to determine which tests were most suitable for online use.
  • Learned about software development cycles, version control (i.e. Git), and the digital health industry.

PUBLICATIONS

YEAR PDF
The roles of cortical oscillations in sustained attention

Michael S. Clayton, Nick Yeung, Roi Cohen Kadosh


Trends in Cognitive Sciences 19 (4), 188-195

 2015
Mapping the mechanisms of transcranial alternating current stimulation: a pathway from network effects to cognition

Ruairidh Battleday, Timothy Muller, Michael S. Clayton, Roi Cohen Kadosh


Frontiers in Psychiatry 5, 162

 2014
The many characters of visual alpha oscillations

Michael S. Clayton, Nick Yeung, Roi Cohen Kadosh


European Journal of Neuroscience

 2017
Electrical stimulation of alpha oscillations stabilises performance on visual attention tasks

Michael S. Clayton, Nick Yeung, Roi Cohen Kadosh


Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

 2019
The effects of 10 Hz transcranial alternating current stimulation on audiovisual task switching

Michael S. Clayton, Nick Yeung, Roi Cohen Kadosh


Frontiers in Neuroscience 12, 67

 2018
High-throughput automated methods for classical and operant conditioning of Drosophila larvae

Elise C Croteau-Chonka, Michael S. Clayton, Lalanti Venkatasubramanian, Samuel N Harris, Benjamin MW Jones, Lakshmi Narayan, Michael Winding, Jean-Baptiste Masson, Marta Zlatic, Kristina T Klein


Elife 11 e70015.

 2022
Consistent response prediction for multilayer networks on unknown manifolds

Aranyak Acharyya, Jesús Arroyo Relión, Michael Clayton, Marta Zlatic, Youngser Park, Carey E. Priebe


arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.03225

 2024

EDUCATION

PhD in Experimental Psychology

January 2014 - May 2018

Jesus College, University of Oxford

BSc Psychology - First Class Honours

October 2010 - July 2013

University of Exeter