Today at Brown

Matthew Harrison’s title will tell you he’s posted in applied mathematics, but don’t be surprised if you see him frequently wandering the life-science corridors.

That’s because the incoming assistant professor has been interested in neuroscience since his undergraduate days. He continued delving into brain science as he earned a master’s degree and Ph.D. in applied mathematics at Brown, working closely with applied mathematics professor Stuart Geman, among others.

“I had a great experience in graduate school,” Harrison said. “The type of math and science I do is closely tied to the scientists I collaborate with. I collaborate a lot with neuroscientists, and Brown is a great place for that.”

Neuroscientists are investigating the elegant manner by which brain cells communicate with each other via electrical impulses. One way to do that is to record the electrical activity generated by some of these neurons. But such studies generate a lot of information — some of it so complex that scientists struggle to interpret complicated patterns that are seen in the data, Harrison said.

“One question is, is this something of scientific importance or just noise,” he said.

Harrison’s challenge is to take these complicated data sets and “simplify them, so they’re understandable.”

“It’s a fairly challenging problem in neuroscience because of the peculiarities” in the data, Harrison continued. “They’re just challenging data sets. They don’t fit in ways that statistics normally operates.”

Aside from the brain, Harrison is interested in human vision “as an example of biology solving an extremely challenging statistical problem.”

“Work at the interface between statistical theory and theories about vision should lead to innovations in both disciplines,” he added.

Harrison, 33, graduated from the University of Virginia, where he met his wife, Marianne. The couple has two children, Josephine, who will be 4 in September, and Benjamin, who’s 2. After finishing his Ph.D. at Brown, Harrison joined Carnegie Mellon University, where he taught graduate-level statistics classes as a visiting assistant professor.

This fall, he will teach “Recent Applications of Probability and Statistics,” a graduate-level class in which he expects as many as 70 students, a testament to the importance that statistical analyses play in modern science.

Outside of academia, Harrison looks forward to exploring Providence.

“It’s all new for us now,” he said.