Mackenzie Weygandt Mathis Explained

Mackenzie W. Mathis
Birth Place:United States
Nationality:American
Fields:Neuroscience, Machine Learning, Computer Vision
Workplaces:École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Rowland Institute at Harvard University
Alma Mater:University of Oregon, Harvard University
Thesis Year:2017
Known For:DeepLabCut deep learning software for animal pose estimation, CEBRA
Awards:Harvard Rowland Fellow, ELLIS Society Scholar, FENS EJN 2022 Young Investigator Award, Eric Kandel Young Neuroscientist Prize 2023

Mackenzie W. Mathis, is an American neuroscientist and principal investigator at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Her lab investigates adaptive mechanisms in biological and artificial intelligence to inform adaptive AI systems and translational research.

Early life and education

Mathis conducted her undergraduate education at the University of Oregon receiving a bachelors of science in 2007.[1] She then worked as a senior research technician and lab manager at the Project A.L.S. Laboratory for Stem Cell Research at Columbia University from 2007 to 2012.[1] [2] Working under the mentorship of Dr. Christopher E. Henderson and Dr. Hynek Wichterle, Mathis modelled amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (A.L.S.) using stem cell-derived motor neurons.[2] During her time in the lab, she published two first author scientific papers, one in the Journal of Neuroscience which offered a novel protocol for generating human limb-innervating neural subtypes in vitro for use in neurological disease research,[3] and the other in Nature Biotechnology on benchmarking iPS stem cell lines ability to make motor neurons.[4] Mathis then moved to Boston and joined the graduate program in molecular and cellular biology (MCB) at Harvard University.[5] On her way to completing her PhD, she also completed a master's degree.[1] [5] During her PhD, Mathis conducted research on the neural circuits underlying reward prediction errors under the mentorship of Professor Naoshige Uchida at the Harvard Center for Brain Science.[5] In her first year as a graduate student, Mathis received an National Science Foundation Fellowship to fund her graduate research.[6] Mathis was able to merge her interests in motor control with Uchida's expertise in neural recordings and behavioral analysis to forge a new scientific direction in the lab[5] and publish a first author paper in Neuron by the end of her PhD regarding the essential role played by the somatosensory cortex in forelimb motor adaptation in rodents.[7] Near the end of her PhD Mathis was awarded the Rowland Fellowship which provided five years of funding to start her own lab at Harvard's Rowland Institute in Cambridge, MA.[5] Prior to founding the Mathis Lab at Harvard, Mathis was also awarded the Women & the Brain (WATB) Fellowship for Advancement in Brain Science which provided her with the funding to work in Germany in the summer of 2017 under the mentorship of Professor Matthias Bethge at the University of Tübingen.[5] In her postdoctoral work, Mathis focused on pioneering deep learning tools for neural and behavioral analysis which served as a critical step towards her independent career.[8]

Career and research

In 2017, Mathis started her lab at the Rowland Institute at Harvard University with a goal of reverse engineering neural circuits that drive adaptive motor behavior.[5] Through large-scale neural recordings and building novel robotic and machine learning tools, the Mathis Lab probes neural circuits and analyzes behavioral outputs to better understand how brain function relates to behavior.[9] Together with Alexander Mathis, Mathis developed DeepLabCut, a deep learning tool to track animal posture over time. This tool relies on transfer learning to optimize an ImageNet-pretrained foundation model and the feature detectors from DeeperCut,[10] to fine-tune on a desired new dataset after sufficient training. Now the package includes many more networks, including their own DLCRNet with pose tracking and re-identification of animals.[11] Mathis has shown the versatility of this tool on many diverse datasets highlighting the robust design and potential for wide use in fields even beyond neuroscience.[12] Mathis is dedicated to the concept of open science[13] and as such, the novel deep learning tool she designed is open access such that researchers worldwide have access to the code in order to use this tool to analyze animal behaviors in an unbiased and precise way to inform a better understanding of how neural activity drives specific behaviors.[13] [14] [15] Her work has been featured in Nature,[16] Bloomberg Business Week,[17] and The Atlantic.[18]

As of August 2020, Mathis moved to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, working within the Brain Mind Institute, Center for Intelligent Systems & Neuro-X Institute as a tenure-track Professor.[19] [20] The lab is hosted at the Campus Biotech in Geneva, Switzerland, where Mathis holds the Bertarelli Foundation Chair of Integrative Neuroscience.[21] [20]

Awards and honors

Personal life

Mathis is married to neuroscientist Dr. Alexander Mathis who is an assistant professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.[15] [29] In her youth, she showed horses competitively in the US.[30]

Notes and References

  1. Web site: People. adaptive motor control lab. en-US. 2020-03-25.
  2. Web site: Mackenzie Weygandt Mathis. scholar.harvard.edu. en. 2020-03-25.
  3. Amoroso. Mackenzie W.. Croft. Gist F.. Williams. Damian J.. O'Keeffe. Sean. Carrasco. Monica A.. Davis. Anne R.. Roybon. Laurent. Oakley. Derek H.. Maniatis. Tom. Henderson. Christopher E.. Wichterle. Hynek. 2013-01-09. Accelerated high-yield generation of limb-innervating motor neurons from human stem cells. The Journal of Neuroscience. 33. 2. 574–586. 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0906-12.2013. 1529-2401. 3711539. 23303937.
  4. Boulting, G.L.*, Kiskinis, E.*, Croft, G.F.*, Amoroso, M.W.*, Oakley, D.H.*, Wainger, B.J., Williams, D.J., Kahler, D.J., Yamaki, M., Davidow, L.S., Rodolfa, C.T., Dimos, J.T., Mikkilineni, S., Macdermott, A.B., Woolf, C.J., Henderson, C.E., Wichterle, H., & Eggan, K.C. (2011). A functionally characterized test set of human induced pluripotent stem cells. Nature Biotechnology, 29, 279-286.
  5. Web site: MCO Graduate to Open Lab Through the Rowland Institute at Harvard. 2017-03-14. Harvard University - Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology. en-US. 2020-03-25.
  6. Web site: FOUR MCB GRADUATE STUDENTS RECEIVE NSF FELLOWSHIPS IN 2013. 2013-04-11. Harvard University - Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology. en-US. 2020-03-25.
  7. Mathis. Mackenzie Weygandt. Mathis. Alexander. Uchida. Naoshige. 2017-03-22. Somatosensory Cortex Plays an Essential Role in Forelimb Motor Adaptation in Mice. Neuron. en. 93. 6. 1493–1503.e6. 10.1016/j.neuron.2017.02.049. 28334611. 5491974. 0896-6273.
  8. Mathis. Alexander. Mamidanna. Pranav. Abe. Taiga. Cury. Kevin M.. Murthy. Venkatesh N.. Mathis. Mackenzie W.. Bethge. Matthias. 2018-04-09. Markerless tracking of user-defined features with deep learning. cs.CV. 1804.03142.
  9. Web site: Mackenzie Mathis. Harvard Brain Science Initiative. en-US. 2020-03-25.
  10. DeeperCut: A Deeper, Stronger, and Faster Multi-Person Pose Estimation Model. Eldar Insafutdinov, Leonid Pishchulin, Bjoern Andres, Mykhaylo Andriluka, Bernt Schiele. 1605.03170 . Insafutdinov . Eldar . Pishchulin . Leonid . Andres . Bjoern . Andriluka . Mykhaylo . Schiele . Bernt . 2016 . cs.CV .
  11. Lauer . J. . Zhou . M. . Ye . S. . Et al. . Multi-animal pose estimation, identification and tracking with DeepLabCut . Nature Methods . 19 . 496–504 . 2022 . 4 . 10.1038/s41592-022-01443-0 . 9007739 .
  12. Web site: An open-source AI tool available to study movement across behaviors and species. 2018-08-30. Harvard Gazette. en-US. 2020-03-25.
  13. Web site: Interview: A Deeper Cut Into Behavior With Mackenzie Mathis. Neuroscience from Technology Networks. en. 2020-03-25.
  14. Web site: 2019-06-18. Apple, Google, and Facebook Are Raiding Animal Research Labs. 2020-03-25. Bloomberg.com.
  15. Web site: A Game-Changing AI Tool for Tracking Animal Movements. Yong. Ed. 2018-07-03. The Atlantic. en-US. 2020-03-25.
  16. Kwok . Roberta . Deep learning powers a motion-tracking revolution . Nature . 30 September 2019 . 574 . 7776 . 137–138 . 10.1038/d41586-019-02942-5 . 31570871 . 2019Natur.574..137K . free .
  17. News: Apple, Google, and Facebook Are Raiding Animal Research Labs . Bloomberg.com . 18 June 2019 .
  18. Web site: A Game-Changing AI Tool for Tracking Animal Movements. The Atlantic. 3 July 2018.
  19. Web site: adaptive motor control lab. adaptive motor control lab. en-US. 2020-03-25.
  20. Evangelista. Sandy. 2019-09-27. Nominations of EPFL professors. en.
  21. Web site: News. adaptive motor control lab. en-US. 2020-03-25.
  22. Web site: Recipients of the Eric Kandel Young Neuroscientists Prize 2023 announced. 29 July 2023. en-US. www.fens.org. 2023-09-26.
  23. Web site: FENS 2022 Young Investigator Prize. 23 August 2021. en-US. 2021-08-23. Lion. Niels.
  24. Web site: CZI – Essential Open Source Software for Science. Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. en-US. 2020-03-25.
  25. Web site: Early-career researcher travel grants 2018: First seven authors selected. 2018-04-03. eLife. en. 2020-03-25.
  26. Web site: BETHGE LAB · Funding. bethgelab.org. 2020-03-25.
  27. Web site: awards Archives. Harvard University - Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology. en-US. 2020-03-25.
  28. Web site: Ernest Peralta Fund Award Archives. Harvard University - Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology. en-US. 2020-03-25.
  29. Web site: Alexander Mathis About. www.people.fas.harvard.edu. 2020-03-25.
  30. Marx . Vivien . 2022-04-01 . Mackenzie Weygandt Mathis . Nature Methods . en . 19 . 4 . 373 . 10.1038/s41592-022-01438-x . 1548-7105.

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