Projects

Studying cellular networks such as neural circuits on a single cell level is essential in understanding complex disorders such as neurodegenerative diseases. Since the dawn of next-generation sequencing technologies and the power of stem cell engineering, it is now feasible to reveal the transcriptomic profile of thousands of cells from patients with poorly understood conditions. On the other hand, neural circuits, even in (simplified) ...

These last years, the demand for high-density and fast-access non-volatile memories has been steadily increasing. However, there is no existing product satisfying this need today, between the fast but volatile DRAM technology and the high-density but slow-access 3D Flash technology. Hence, the ‘Storage Class Memory’ (SCM) has emerged to fill this speed-density gap in the memory hierarchy, enabling the development of future computing and/or ...

The main goal of this PhD research is to develop and optimize composite materials to be used as structural supercapacitors. Furthermore, those structural composites possess the additional functionality of very high capacitance. The resulting materials will thus be multifunctional components to be applied in diverse engineering structures.

The use of a capacitor for energy storage offers numerous advantages. The (dis)charging of a ...

The brain is the most complex organ of our body, and a large bulk of research is conducted to understand its basic mechanisms and its impairments associated with neurological deficits. Notably, there are a variety of empirical methods that allow scientists to examine brain functioning. In particular, it is necessary to rely on non-invasive techniques to study brain activity in healthy people and patients. An emerging technique for brain ...

Perception, action, and cognition are achieved through concerted neural activity in large-scale brain networks. As such, understanding the basic mechanisms of long-range neuronal communication may permit to elucidate how the brain orchestrates when we perform a complex task. Motor coordination is a prototypical example of complex behaviour, and its study is very well suited for broader investigations about the architecture and functioning of ...

The project aims at designing novel multi-channel algorithms for several EEG signal processing tasks, using a state-of-the-art mobile high-density EEG headset with dry electrodes. The results are relevant for future mobile brain-computer interfaces.

A large part of cerebral processes is implemented through functional interactions between groups of neurons located in distant brain regions. High-density electroencephalography (EEG) is a technique that permits studying brain activity in a non-invasive manner and with millisecond temporal resolution, and is particularly suited to study the electrophysiological processes that underlie long-range functional interactions in the human brain. ...

Neurons communicate with each other through action potentials or so-called ‘spikes’. When an electrode is inserted into the brain, it records spikes of all the neurons in its close vicinity. To decode brain processes, all these spikes have to be sorted according to their underlying neuronal source, aided by so-called 'spike sorting' (SS) algorithms. Recent advances in silicon technology have paved the way for neuroprobes with high-density ...

Heart failure (HF) is a growing public health problem, the leading cause of hospitalization, and a major cause of mortality. Approximately 50% of chronic HF patients have HF with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) and 50% suffer from HF with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). As the population ages, HFpEF will continue to be a growing public health problem. In contrast to advances in the treatment of patients with HFrEF, drug strategies with ...