Cengiz Gunay's page at the Prinz Lab

Cengiz Günay (Gunay) <cgunay AT emory.edu>
1510 Cliton Rd, Dept Biology, Atlanta, GA 30322
ResearcherID: A-5420-2011, Google Scholar Page

Research Interests

As can be seen from my previous postdoc at the Jaeger Lab, I am interested in the production and analysis of large electrophysiology simulation and recording data sets (Gunay et al., 2008, 2009). In the Prinz Lab, I am involved in several projects:

Drosophila motoneuron model to study Na channel splice variants
Together with postdoctoral fellow Fred Sieling and undergraduate student Logesh Dharmar, we are building a conductance model of the Drosophila motoneurons. This involves collecting voltage clamp experimental data from outside researchers and fitting and tuning model parameters. The goal of this is to use the model to test the functional effect of the different Na channel splice variants found in embryonic and adult Drosophila (Lin, Gunay et al, 2012).
Calcium sensors for activity-dependent homeostatic regulation (ADHR)
The pyloric network in lobster stomatogastric ganglion is remarkable in its capacity to tolerate changes in the environment while keeping its triphasic rhythm intact. The ADHR mechanisms thought to maintain this rhythm need to first sense the network activity levels. For this sensing mechanism, calcium influx has been a highly likely candidate. Therefore, we search for calcium sensors by studying the parameter space of single and multiple sensors across 20 million pyloric network models and constructed a database to analyze their properties (Gunay et al, 2010).

Publications

Here are some selected publications, please see my CV below for a longer list.

Wei-Hsiang Lin, Cengiz Günay, Richard Marley, Astrid A. Prinz, and Richard A. Baines (2012). “Activity-Dependent Alternative Splicing Increases Persistent Sodium Current and Promotes Seizure.” J Neurosci 32(21): 7267-7277; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.6042-11.2012

Cengiz Günay, Astrid A. Prinz (2010). “Model calcium sensors for network homeostasis: Sensor and readout parameter analysis from a database of model neuronal networks.” J Neurosci 30(5): 1686-1698; DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3098-09.2010

Cengiz Günay, JR Edgerton, S Li, T Sangrey, AA Prinz and D Jaeger (2009). “Database Analysis of Simulated and Recorded Electrophysiological Datasets with PANDORA’s Toolbox.” Neuroinformatics, 7(2): 93-111. DOI: 10.1007/s12021-009-9048-z (public access at the PubMed Central).

Cengiz Günay, Jeremy R. Edgerton, and Dieter Jaeger (2008). “Channel density distributions explain dynamical variability between neurons: using a combined physiology and computer simulation database approach.” J Neurosci. 28: 7476-7491; DOI: 10.1523/jneurosci.4198-07.2008

Also see this Zip file with both papers that use Pandora and supplementary materials.

Software

PANDORA neural data and database analysis Matlab toolbox and the GenCompress neural data lossless compression utility.
My other Matlab utilities.
Pyloric network simulator with calcium sensors.

Teaching

I am currently teaching the junior-level undergraduate course CS325 on Artificial Intelligence at the Math & Computer Science Department of Emory. Previously in Fall 2012, I taught the undergraduate senior/graduate course CS485/540 on Software Engineering in the same department.

Curriculum Vitae

Here is a recent copy of my curriculum vitae.