Postgraduates awarded EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellowships

Deren Barsakcioglu and James Eaton have been awarded EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellowships to help them launch their career in academia

Deren Barsakcioglu and James Eaton have been awarded EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellowships to help them launch their career in academia

Two of the Department’s PhD students - Deren Barsakcioglu (Neural Interfaces, Circuits and Systems) and James Eaton (Speech and Audio Processing, Communications and Signal Processing) have received these highly competitive and prestigious Doctoral Fellowships from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).  The Department is thrilled that two of its PhD students have been recognised for not only their academic excellence but for their future potential as career researchers.

 The Doctoral Prize Fellowship is a scheme intended to help universities attract and retain the very best newly qualified PhDs.  Successful students are provided with a one year funded Fellowship to help them to launch a career in research.

Deren has an exceptional academic record within the Department. He started his PhD in October 2011 having graduated from our MSc in Analogue and Digital IC Design with distinction. During his PhD he has conducted world class research on the large-scale recording of neural activity which has been published in top journals and international conferences. His work was recognised in 2013 when he received the best paper award at the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems.  He was also invited to present his work at the Royal Academy of Engineering workshop ‘2012 Young Researchers’ Futures on Neural Engineering’.

Deren says about the Fellowship: ‘I am honoured to be awarded this Fellowship, as it presents an invaluable opportunity for me to start research of my own and grow into an independent researcher.

Initially, I would like to follow-up the work I have done during my PhD, and translate the systems I developed into a compact neuroscience tool. However, my main objective is to embark on exciting new research on a novel method to ensure long-term, stable, efficient and accurate monitoring of large neuronal ensembles for next generation neural prosthetic and scientific applications. I would also like to further investigate the feasibility of some of the hypotheses and demonstrate proof-of-concept in order to secure longer term EPSRC funding.

Furthermore, the Fellowship will also allow me to continue benefitting from the expertise of the EEE family and in particular the Neural Interfaces Group who have always supported and intellectually stimulated me.”

James joined the Department in October 2011 after having been in industry previously and is currently working on acoustic signal processing under the supervision of Dr Patrick Naylor.  During his PhD,  he took a couple of interruptions of study to carry out highly relevant short-term research assistant positions to gain useful experience, including notably, working on a project for Google, and has recently run an international research competition, the ACE Challenge.

James says: "I am very pleased to be receiving the Fellowship.  I plan to use it to extend my current research into new areas, write journal papers to extend the reach of my PhD studies, as well as make useful new research connections at major conferences throughout the year."

More information on the EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellowships can be found on the EPSRC website.