Implantable Neuroelectronic Interfaces

Abstract: Bioelectronic medicine and brain-machine interfaces have the potential to create personalised, precise, side-effect-free therapies by modulating neural activity via miniature implanted devices that operate in a closed-loop fashion. This talk will present recent research in the development of pre-clinical and translational neural interfaces. The first part of the talk will discuss efforts to miniaturize and improve the longevity of active neuroelectronic implants, while the second part of the talk will present neural interfaces that make use of several modalities (i.e., electricity, light, ultrasound) to increase the specificity of neural interaction.

Bio: Vasiliki (Vasso) Giagka was born in Athens, Greece, in 1984. She received the M.Eng. degree in electronic and computer engineering from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece, in 2009. She then moved to London to join the Analogue and Biomedical Electronics Group at University College London, UK from where she received the PhD degree in 2014. In 2015 she joined the Implanted Devices Group at University College London, UK, as a research associate. She currently, since September 2015, holds an assistant professor position at the Bioelectronics Group at Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, and since September 2018 she is also leading the group Technologies for Bioelectronics, at Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM, Berlin, Germany. Between her two affiliations, she is carrying out research on the design and fabrication of active neural interfaces. In particular, she is investigating new approaches for neural stimulation and wireless power transfer, as well as, implant miniaturization, microsystem integration, packaging and encapsulation to meet the challenges of bioelectronic medicines.