CV

Personal Details

Name: Alexander ‘Alex’ Burmester

E-Mail: alexburm@gmail.com

Website: alexburmester.com

Nationality: Australian

Date of Birth: 23/07/1981

Education

1999-2002: Bachelor of Science, majoring in Neuroscience and Psychology (Honours IIA), University of Queensland

2004-2009: PhD Experimental Psychology, University of Queensland

Work Experience

December 2019 – Present:

  • Deakin University, Cognitive Neuroscience Unit – Melbourne Australia
  • Technical Officer
  • Developing web- and app-based tools for cognitive assessment of healthy and clinical groups. Developing and optimizing data analysis pipelines for the analysis of behavioural and neuroimaging data.

November 2018 – December 2019:

  • Australian Catholic University – Melbourne, Australia
  • Technical Officer
  • Developing software for projects in the Microstructual Imaging and Rehabilitative Plasticity research group at the Mary Mackillop Health Research Institute at ACU. Also developing data analysis pipelines for the analysis of behavioural and neuroimaging data.

May 2015 – December 2017:

  • New York University Abu Dhabi – Abu Dhabi, UAE
  • Research Associate
  • Conducted research into the mechanisms underlying visual working memory in humans. Involved designing, programming and running behavioural experiments for use in the lab and online contexts. Programming was done in MATLAB (using Psychtoolbox and Palmedes), Javascript (using WebGL) and HTML 5. Also involved data analysis using MATLAB and R and preparation of research manuscripts for publication.

January 2013 – March 2014:

  • Queensland Program of Assistance for Survivors of Torture and Trauma (QPASTT) – Brisbane, Australia
  • Information and Systems Officer
  • Managing and maintaining a client database and website for a non-government non-for-profit counselling and refugee services organisation. Optimization of existing .NET 2.0 software to .NET 4.5 platform. Continuing development of database-driven winforms application. Website development utilising the wordpress platform.

May 2011 – October 2011:

  • Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR) – Brisbane, Australia
  • C#/SQL Developer
  • Developing and providing project management and technical support for Windows portable tablet application and backend windows webserver for monitoring mosquito populations throughout Queensland, utilising Google maps. Entity framework with LINQ was used for the data access layer.

October 2007 – October 2009:

  • Intellidesign – Brisbane, Australia
  • Database Developer
  • Running and administration of a Linux-based custom content management system (CMS) for an electrical engineering firm. Included development of the CMS using a LAMP stack/framework.

January 2004 – September 2009:

  • University of Queensland – Brisbane, Australia
  • PhD Student/Tutor
  • Developing a C/C++ application using OpenGL to present experimental stimuli for neuroscience experiments. Statistical analyses using MATLAB scripts. Writing and research for a PhD thesis. Presented work at conferences in Australia, USA and Russia. Published four papers in peer-reviewed journals. Tutored in Statistics and Cognitive Neuroscience.

Publications

  • Adam Clemente, Arnaud Attyé, Félix Renard, Fernando Calamante, Alex Burmester, Phoebe Imms, Evelyn Deutscher, Hamed Akhlaghi, Paul Beech, Peter H Wilson, Govinda Poudel, Karen Caeyenberghs (2022). Individualised Profiling of White Matter Organisation in Moderate-to-Severe Traumatic Brain Injury Patients. Brain Research (in press) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2023.148289
  • Lara Fernandez, Alex Burmester, Juan Dominguez Duque, Timothy J. Silk, Christian E. Hyde, Melissa Kirkovski, Peter G. Enticott, and Karen Caeyenberghs (2022). Examination of Cerebellar Grey-Matter Volume in Children with Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Coordinated Analysis Using the ACAPULCO Algorithm. Cerebellum ,December, 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12311-022-01503-3.
  • Phoebe Imms, Juan F Domínguez D, Alex Burmester, Caio Seguin, Adam Clemente, Thijs Dhollander, Peter H Wilson, Govinda Poudel, Karen Caeyenberghs (2021). Navigating the link between processing speed and network communication in the human brain. Brain Structure and Function 226 (4), 1281-1302.
  • Adam Clemente, Juan F Domínguez D, Phoebe Imms, Alex Burmester, Thijs Dhollander, Peter H Wilson, Govinda Poudel, Karen Caeyenberghs (2021). Individual differences in attentional lapses are associated with fiber‐specific white matter microstructure in healthy adults. Psychophysiology. e13871.
  • A Burmester, G Wallis (2012). Contrasting predictions of low-and high-threshold models for the detection of changing visual features. Perception 41 (5), 505-516.
  • A Burmester, G Wallis (2011). Flexible resource allocation for the detection of changing visual features.Perception 40 (3), 299-316.
  • A Burmester, G Wallis (2011). Thresholds for the detection of changing visual features. Perception 40 (4), 409-421.
  • A Burmester, J Broerse (2010). Adaptation to combinations of form, colour, and movement. Perception 39 (5), 620-626

Conference Presentations

  • A Burmester, K Srenivasan, D Fougnie (2016). One feature to rule them all: A case for location being special in visual working memory. Poster presented at the 24th annual meeting on Object Perception, Attention, and Memory (OPAM), Boston, MA.
  • A Burmester, D Fougnie (2016). The sum is no more than its parts: No evidence for bound features in a multi-feature change detection task. Poster presented at the 16th annual meeting of the Visual Sciences Society, St. Pete Beach, FL.
  • A Burmester, G Wallis (2006). Capacity limits for the detection of changing visual features. Poster presented at the 29th European Conference for Visual Perception (ECVP).
  • A Burmester, G Wallis (2006). Capacity limits for the detection of changing visual features. Poster presented at the 6th annual meeting of the Visual Sciences Society, Sarasota, FL.

Popular Science Publications

  • A Burmester (2017). Working Memory: How you keep things ‘in mind’ over the short term. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/working-memory-how-you-keep-things-in-mind-over-the-short-term-75960
  • A Burmester (2016). Gambling on limited information: our visual system and probabilistic inference. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/gambling-on-limited-information-our-visual-system-and-probabilistic-inference-57410
  • A Burmester (2015). How do our brains reconstruct the visual world? The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/how-do-our-brains-reconstruct-the-visual-world-49276