Faculty Profiles

Professor Coleman’s research is multi-disciplinary at its core. His main goal is to use tools from information theory, neuroscience, machine learning and bioelectronics to understand – and control – interacting systems with biological and computer parts. His research in developing multi-functional, flexible bio-electronics are enabling wireless health applications that are minimally observable to the user. His brain-machine interface research uses information theory, control theory and neuroscience to interpret – and design – systems from the viewpoint of multiple agents cooperating to achieve a common goal. The benefits of this research include helping subjects with disabilities as well as enabling all members of society to enhance capabilities in many daily activities. His research on causal inference uses information theory and machine learning to understand causal relationships in time series of data. Within the context of neuroscience, it is being used to understand dynamical aspects of brain function. The approach is applicable to arbitrary modalities and to a variety of applications, including financial networks, social networks and network security.

Capsule Bio:

Todd P. Coleman joined the Jacobs School of Engineering in 2011 as an associate professor in the Department of Bioengineering. He received bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering (summa cum laude), as well as computer engineering (summa cum laude) from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2000, along with master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Cambridge, in 2002, and 2005. During the 2005-06 academic year, he was a postdoctoral scholar in computational neuroscience at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital. From fall 2006 until June 2011, he was an assistant professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Neuroscience at the University of Illinois, Urbana, Champaign.

Dr. Coleman, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship recipient, was awarded the University of Michigan College of Engineering’s Senior Class Prize in 1999 and was awarded the MIT EECS Department’s M. J. Levin Award for Best Masterworks Oral Thesis Presentation in 2002. In fall 2008, he was a co-recipient of the University of Illinois College of Engineering’s Grainger Award in Emerging Technologies for development of a novel, practical timing-based technology. Beginning fall 2009, he served as a co-Principal Investigator on a five-year NSF IGERT interdisciplinary training grant for graduate students, titled “Neuro-engineering: A Unified Educational Program for Systems Engineering and Neuroscience”. Coleman also has been serving on the DARPA Information Science and Technology study group for a three-year term, beginning fall 2009. He was a Fellow with the University of Illinois Center for Advanced Study for the 2010-11 academic year.