Speakers

  • Payam Barnaghi

    Payam Barnaghi

    Personal details

    Payam Barnaghi University of Surrey

    Biography

    Payam is Professor of Machine Intelligence in the Centre for Computer Vision and Signal Processing at the University of Surrey. His work focuses on AI, machine learning and semantic computing. He is technical lead of the NHS-funded TIHM for Dementia project and deputy director of the UK DRI CR&T programme.

  • Paul Beard

    Paul Beard

    Personal details

    Paul Beard University College London

    Biography

    Paul is Professor of Biomedical Photoacoustics at UCL and he founded and leads the Photoacoustic Imaging Group. They are developing a new method of non-invasive biomedical imaging based upon the use of laser-generated acoustic waves for visualising the structure and function of soft tissues.

  • David Borton

    David Borton

    Personal details

    David Borton Brown University

    Biography

    David is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Brown University’s School of Engineering. Prof. Borton’s team leverages engineering principles to untangle the underpinnings of sensorimotor and neuropsychiatric disease and injury.

  • Martyn Boutelle

    Martyn Boutelle

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    Martyn Boutelle Imperial College London

    Biography

    Martyn is a Professor of Biomedical Sensors Engineering and Deputy Head of the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London.  He was a research fellow in the University Laboratory of Physiology, University of Oxford, followed by academic positions at King’s College London. 

  • Dries Braeken

    Dries Braeken

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    Dries Braeken imec

    Biography

    Dries is leading the Cell and Tissue Technologies group in the life science department of imec. His research interests are in the development and validation of advanced silicon technologies for cell and tissue interfacing for healthcare applications.

  • Matthew Brookes

    Matthew Brookes

    Personal details

    Matthew Brookes University of Nottingham

    Biography

    Matt is Professor of Physics at the University of Nottingham. His research centres on development and application of magnetoencephalography (MEG). He has made significant contributions to data modelling and his most recent work centres on using ‘quantum’ sensors for MEG signal measurement.

  • Marc Aurel Busche

    Marc Busche

    Personal details

    Marc Aurel Busche UK DRI at University College London

    Biography

    Marc received his MD/PhD from the Technical University of Munich, where he worked with Arthur Konnerth and Hans Förstl. His postdoctoral work was in Bradley Hyman's lab at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Marc is also a board-certified psychiatrist.

  • Ben Cox

    Ben Cox

    Personal details

    Ben Cox University College London

    Biography

    Ben is a Reader in Biomedical Acoustics at UCL, where he is undergraduate programme director in medical physics. His research interests are in the areas of modelling and inverse problems in biomedical ultrasound and photoacoustic imaging. He is a co-author of ‘k-Wave’, an ultrasound modelling toolbox.

  • Ellie D'Hondt

    Ellie D'hondt

    Personal details

    Ellie D'Hondt imec

    Biography

    Ellie is a data innovator at imec. Her current work focusses on smart health and smart cities. Ellie assesses how data analytics figures in these verticals for particular use cases such as multimodal mobility and clinical data analytics. 

  • Timothy Denison

    Timothy Denison

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    Timothy Denison The Oxford Institute of Biomedical Engineering

    Biography

    Tim is a RAEng Chair in Emerging Technologies at Oxford, where he explores physiologic closed-loop systems. Previously, he was VP of Research & Technology for the Restorative Therapies Group at Medtronic, where he helped oversee the design of technologies for the treatment of neurological disease.

  • Patrick Dupont

    Patrick Dupont

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    Patrick Dupont Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

    Biography

    Patrick obtained a PhD in theoretical physics in 1990 and is now a full professor of brain imaging at KU Leuven, Belgium and an extraordinary professor in nuclear medicine at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He is director of the Postgraduate Studies in Advanced Medical Imaging at KU Leuven.

  • Barun Dutta

    Barun Dutta

    Personal details

    Barun Dutta imec

    Biography

    Barun is the Chief Scientist of imec where he has been since 2010, leading R&D programs in Smart Systems, Energy and Semiconductor Process Technology.  As a Venture Capitalist, between 1998-2010, he worked extremely closely with 15 founding teams, incubating, mentoring, and/or as a Board Member. 

  • Aldo Faisal

    Aldo Faisal

    Personal details

    Aldo Faisal Imperial College London

    Biography

    Aldo is a Reader in Neurotechnology at Imperial. He leads the Brain & Behaviour Lab, is founding director of the £20m UKRI CDT in Artificial Intelligence for Healthcare, and director of Behaviour Analytics Lab (Data Science Institute). He also holds positions in the University of Oxford and UCL.

  • James Fawcett

    James Fawcett

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    James Fawcett University of Cambridge

    Biography

    James’ main interest is the restoration of CNS function lost through spinal cord injury, neurodegenerative disease and ageing. He has focused on activation of axon regeneration and plasticity through manipulation of the extracellular matrix and integrins.

  • Shelley Fried

    Shelley Fried

    Personal details

    Shelley Fried Harvard University

    Biography

    Shelley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School. His lab studies how and why neurons of the CNS respond to artificial stimulation and uses that information to help develop more effective devices and strategies.

  • Ian Gilmore

    Ian Gilmore

    Personal details

    Ian Gilmore National Physical Laboratory

    Biography

    Ian is a Senior Fellow and Head of Science at the National Physical Laboratory. He is founding director of the National Centre of Excellence in Mass Spectrometry Imaging. This centre supports industry and academia through one of the largest ranges of imaging capabilities worldwide.

  • Christopher Grigsby

    Christopher Grigsby

    Personal details

    Christopher Grigsby Karolinska Institutet

    Biography

    Christopher trained as a biomedical engineer, focusing on designing polymers to deliver genes and direct cell behaviour. He joined Molly Stevens’ satellite group at Karolinska Institutet and his work focuses on the application of biomaterials to direct cell reprogramming and treat neurodegenerative disease.

  • Nir Grossman

    Nir Grossman

    Personal details

    Nir Grossman UK DRI at Imperial College London

    Biography

    Nir is an assistant professor at Imperial College London and a foundation fellow of the UK DRI. Nir is educated in physics and electromagnetic engineering, with a PhD in neuroscience from Imperial. He completed postdoctoral training, as a Wellcome Trust Fellow, at MIT and Harvard University.

  • Andrew Jackson

    Andrew Jackson

    Personal details

    Andrew Jackson Newcastle University

    Biography

    Andrew’s research interests include motor control, learning, sleep and oscillatory brain dynamics. This  informs the development of closed-loop neural interface technologies for the brain, spinal cord and muscles, with applications in the treatment of stroke, spinal cord injury and epilepsy.

  • Walter Koroshetz

    Walter Koroshetz

    Personal details

    Walter Koroshetz National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

    Biography

    Walter is the Director, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. He leads a number of programs including NIH’s BRAIN Initiative, NIH Neuroscience Blueprint, the NIH/ Uniformed Health Services University Traumatic Brain Injury Center and NINDS Alzheimer Disease Related Dementia programme.

  • Stéphanie Lacour

    Stephanie Lacour

    Personal details

    Stéphanie Lacour École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne

    Biography

    Stéphanie holds the Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Neuroprosthetic Technology at the School of Engineering at the EPFL. She is Professor in Microengineering and Bioengineering at EPFL and is the current director of EPFL Center for Neuroprosthetics at Campus Biotech in Geneva.

  • George Malliaras

    George Malliaras

    Personal details

    George Malliaras University of Cambridge

    Biography

    George received his PhD from the University of Groningen. Before joining Cambridge, he taught at Ecole des Mines de St. Etienne and at Cornell University. He is a Fellow of the Materials Research Society and of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

  • Róisín Owens

    Personal details

    Róisín Owens University of Cambridge

    Biography

    Róisín is a Lecturer at the Dept. of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology in the University of Cambridge. Her current research centers on application of organic electronic materials for monitoring biological systems in vitro, with a specific interest in studying the gut-brain-microbiome axis.

  • Simon Shultz

    Simon Shultz

    Personal details

    Simon Shultz Imperial College London

    Biography

    Simon is Professor of Neurotechnology and Director of the Centre for Neurotechnology at Imperial College London. His research interests are in the development (and application) of technology for understanding brain circuitry involved in perception and memory, and how it is affected by neurodegenerative disorders.

  • Zoltan Takats

    Zoltan Takats

    Personal details

    Zoltan Takats Imperial College London

    Biography

    Zoltan is a Professor of Analytical Chemistry. He pursues research in mass spectrometry and is one of the founders of ‘Ambient Mass Spectrometry’. He is the primary inventor of 6 mass spectrometric ionization techniques and the founder of companies pursuing analytical and medical device development.

  • Alan Urban

    Alan Urban

    Personal details

    Alan Urban Neuro-Electronics Research Flanders

    Biography

    Alan is group leader at the Neuro-Electronics Research Flanders (NERF) and is professor at the KU Leuven. His team is a leader in the development of the functional ultrasound imaging (fUSi) technology. He has received several scientific/entrepreneurship awards and created several companies.

  • Nick Van Helleputte

    Nick Van Helleputte

    Personal details

    Nick Van Helleputte imec

    Biography

    Nick is currently R&D manager of the Connected Health Solutions group. His research focus is on ultra-low-power circuits for biomedical applications. He has been involved in analog and mixed-signal ASIC design for wearable and implantable healthcare applications. 

  • Mark Woolrich

    Mark Woolrich

    Personal details

    Mark Woolrich University of Oxford

    Biography

    Mark is Head of Analysis and Associate Director at OHBA and Professor of Computational Neuroscience.  His research focuses on the development of new computational methods for analysing neuroimaging data. This allows novel questions to be asked about the function/dysfunction of the human brain.

How temperature and circadian rhythms intersect to regulate a protein shown to protect against neurodegeneration

A new study led by Dr Marco Brancaccio (UK DRI at Imperial) and Dr Marieke Hoekstra (former UK DRI at Imperial, now VIB-KU Leuven Center for Brain & Disease Research) offers a deeper insight into how a neuroprotective pathway is regulated both by temperature and the body clock. This research, published in the journal PNAS, could open up new therapeutic avenues for neurodegenerative disease. Read more on the UK DRI website

Introducing Cynthia Sandor: Pioneering earlier detection of Parkinson’s

Dr Cynthia Sandor, former Emerging Leader at the UK DRI at Cardiff, joins the UK DRI at Imperial as a Group Leader, where she will be tackling early diagnosis of Parkinson’s. 

With a background in genetics, Dr Sandor uses computational methods to bring greater understanding to the underlying molecular mechanisms of Parkinson’s. Read more about Cynthia's work on the UK DRI website.

UK DRI