Introduction
Bioelectronic medicine is used to treat disorders that pharmaceutical medicine cannot. They allow us to interface with the human body in the electrical domain, which bypasses the need for conventionally used non-specific and slow acting drugs.
By stimulating and recording the peripheral nervous system in a closed loop fashion, we can start to realize new technology referred to as Neuroprosthetics. The creation of such a technology has to face several challenges, like its miniaturization, biocompatibility and power efficiency. The use of conductive polymers has many advantages with respect to overcoming these obstacles.
We are working towards smart readout devices to allow for integration with the physiology of the human body and to achieve efficient neuromodulation of the nervous tissue. You will design and fabricate these type of devices and test them in our labs. The project’s final goal is to develop the next generation of neural interfaces, capable of realizing the new era of neuroprosthetics and bioelectronic medicine that lies ahead.
How do we build such devices?
This is where you come in.
Practical work
This project focuses on fabricating and characterizing the next generation of electrodes that can be used for such bioelectronic applications. During the project you will:
· Review literature, design and execute experiments
Design device prototypes and create a sensing algorithms
Test and optimize your devices using existing microfabrication methods
Model compound action potentials experimentally and do experimental data analysis
Report the results in a clear way to a multidisciplinary team
Required skills
· Circuit design
· Programming basics (python is preferred)
· Creativity, ambition and enthusiasm are most important of course
We do not expect MSc students to be experienced in microfabrication, but basic theoretical knowledge of photolithography and other microfabrication techniques is preferred, since this will be a major part of the project.
Where will you be working
You will be in Microsystems group with the Neuromorphic engineering team. You will be one of the users of the new lab facilities that just been set up. Also, you will collaborate with a PhD supervisor, working together with lab users of the MicrofabLab here at Eindhoven University.
You want to be an engineer at the interface of neuroscience and electronics?
email background and motivation to N.J.Burghoorn@tue.nl
References
Koh, Ryan G L, Michael Balas, Adrian I Nachman, and José Zariffa. “Selective Peripheral Nerve Recordings from Nerve Cuff Electrodes Using Convolutional Neural Networks.” Journal of Neural Engineering 17, no. 1 (2020): 016042. https://doi.org/10.1088/1741-2552/ab4ac4.
Dong, Chaoqun, Alejandro Carnicer-Lombarte, Filippo Bonafè, et al. “Electrochemically Actuated Microelectrodes for Minimally Invasive Peripheral Nerve Interfaces.” Nature Materials 23, no. 7 (2024): 969–76. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-024-01886-0.
Carnicer-Lombarte, Alejandro, Alexander J. Boys, Amparo Güemes, et al. “Ultraconformable Cuff Implants for Long-Term Bidirectional Interfacing of Peripheral Nerves at Sub-Nerve Resolutions.” Nature Communications 15, no. 1 (2024): 7523. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-51988-1.
Van De Burgt, Yoeri, Armantas Melianas, Scott Tom Keene, George Malliaras, and Alberto Salleo. “Organic Electronics for Neuromorphic Computing.” Nature Electronics 1, no. 7 (2018): 386–97. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-018-0103-3.
