B-CRATOS 3rd Newsletter

In May 2024, the third B-CRATOS newsletter was published.

Within these 6 articles you can:
🔸find more information about our last Consortium Meeting in LINKS Foundation
🔸 watch the entire version of our successful webinar on Clinical and User impacts on BCI with Paul Wanda (BlackRock Microsystems Europe), Mijail S.(Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Ian Burkhart and Scott Imbrie (BCI pioneers and advocates)
🔸 discover our impactful infographic and “meet our team” section
🔸 learn the following steps concerning the EIC Innovation Bootcamp 4.0
🔸 watch the interview of Robinson Guachi – Senior Research Fellow Mechanical Engineer – and Burim Kabashi – Research Fellow Electronic Engineer – in Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna concerning their incredible work on Mia Hand!

 

Discover more here!

 

Fourth Consortium Meeting in LINKS Foundation

In May 2024, we held our fourth in-person consortium meeting at LINKS Foundation in Turin. We shared updates and goals for each Work Package and discussed future plans for B-CRATOS. The meeting included general sessions, focused discussions on specific experiments and setups, and a tour of the LINKS Foundation.

Over the two days, we had productive discussions, and each partner left Italy with renewed energy and updated plans for B-CRATOS.

 

Special Webinar on BCI’s history

On 20th June 2024 a webinar with John Donoghue, Professor of Neuroscience and Engineering at Brown University took place. Watch such an interesting discussion of Brain-Computer Interfaces’ background (BCI) to discover the impact on #healthcare and daily living!

Not able to participate at it? Please find the replay here: Special webinar on BCI’s history with John Donoghue (youtube.com)

 

Free Webinar on Brain Computer Interface

Join us at our free webinar in March to a lively discussion of the impact of next generation brain computer interface technologies for various clinical applications with Paul Wanda from Blackrock Microsystems Europe!

Ethics within B-CRATOS

Why would ethics be relevant for a project such as B-CRATOS? Don’t we simply have to do our job, pave the way to innovation and not worry about any such kind of philosophical-like questions?

Definitely not.

On the contrary, if we look closely, our project has many reasons to take ethics into consideration: new technology and its future uses, use of animals for testing, a technology that is linked to the brain, raising many questions of safety and ethics. For us, this question is of prime importance, this is why we have an External Ethics Board supervising B-CRATOS. The Board gives us guidance and helps us understand what’s at stake. These insights are crucial to design the technology, and then to implement it, and improve it!

You can take a look at this video, in which our Ethics Board Chair, Nicola Di Stefano, explains why it matters.

If you wish to learn more about ethics in the field of technology and innovation, be sure to join us on October 27th at 4pm CEST: we organise a webinar to discuss the topic. It’s free! (register)

Meet Ilangko Balasingham from NTNU

Meet Ilangko Balasingham, Professor of Medical Signal Processing and Communications at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology!

He tells us briefly about B-CRATOS and NTNU’s role in the project.

 

Meeting in Trondheim!

At the end of September, the B-CRATOs team was invited to hold its General meeting at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). After a long trip to Trondheim and a warm coffee, we started to work efficiently – two days of discussions and work on the project, involving a crucial testing step of the system and a slight peak of adrenaline when we were told that the suitcase with the precious material was caught in the airport troubles and thus, delayed.

This meeting was a very fruitful, as we discussed the next steps of the B-CRATOS project and reviewed the progresses accomplished so far (not to praise ourselves, but to get experience and better prepare for the upcoming adventures ;)) It was also the occasion to have the sound and wise advises of our Advisory Board members.

Everyone very focused

Our global work is advancing, and we are happy to have a community around us, (you, visitor of our website! and Social networks), people with expectations towards the continuation of the project and what it will bring to science, everything encouraging us to work harder.

 

A bit of stress. Is it working…?

Since we don’t meet so often, each meeting is a bit stressful as we hold testing session for the results of different work packages to work in combination together and can’t really be sure it will work just like the theory dictates. And if it doesn’t work – there is not so much time to fix things up, so it is indeed really stressful. Although we always manage…!

Our bags full of great memories and working notes, we headed back to our usual workplace. Thanks a lot to our colleagues from NTNU for organising the meeting and welcoming us in the “North”. Next time we will meet, the project will be at a new level, and that is even more motivating.

 

Meet Dr. Ali Khaleghi, team leader of the Wireless Powering and Communication team!

In a short interview, Dr. Ali Khaleghi, from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) introduces himself and his role in B-CRATOS. What is his team working on? What kind of techniques do they use in the project? What are some big challenges now for the Wireless Powering and Communication team?

Find out in the video!


We hope you enjoy meeting our colleagues. We will work on more interview videos to present both our teammate and the progresses in B-CRATOS. Indeed, it’s always good to see the faces behind all the big work made and ahead of us.

More videos >> here

Register now for the September Summer School: “Next Generation Wireless Brain Machine Interface”!

 

The B-CRATOS team prepares a summer school for Master students, PhD students and Post-Docs desiring to strengthen and deepen their knowledge in the field of Brain-Communication Interface, Robotics, Neurotechnology…

Join us in Trondheim at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) on September 27-29 for three days of lectures, visits and demo! We also plan on having team challenges and a Poster session for you to share your work with other students (and yes, there will be awards ;-)).

Our lecturers are all experts in their field, and we will have the chance to have lectures by Prof. John Donoghue and Prof. Paul Meaney!

Prof. John Donoghue is the H.M. Wriston Professor of Neuroscience and Engineering at Brown University. He is known for translational research in human brain computer interfaces to restore movement for people with paralysis (known as ‘BrainGate’, as well as for fundamental research to explain how networks of cortical neurons compute actions from plans. At Brown, he was the founding Chair of the Brown Department of Neuroscience, the founding director of the Brown Institute for Brain Science (now the Carney Institute) and the Department of Veterans Affairs Center of Excellence in Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology.

Dr Paul Meaney has extensive industrial experience from working with millimeter-wave technology at both Millitech Corporation, USA, and Alpha Industries, MA. He has been a Professor with Dartmouth College since 1997, with Chalmers University of Technology and is also the President and Co-Founder of Microwave Imaging System Technologies, Inc., Hanover. His current research interests include microwave tomography, which exploits the many facets of dielectric properties in tissue and other media, and in particular, for breast cancer imaging, where his group was the first to translate an actual system into the clinic.

 

We will discuss, in particular:

  • Wireless power transmission,
  • Signal processing and communication protocols,
  • Brain computer interface,
  • Intra-body communication
  • Robotics,
  • E-skin

If you have interest for these thematics, apply now! The selection is limited to 30 students, so that we can keep a human-sized group and discuss more efficiently during the lectures.

Discover the full programme and register here

The full price for an early pre-registration (until at least mid July) is 250€, it comprises teaching and meals. If you have any questions or special needs, feel free to contact us.

 

We are also thankful to our sponsor, COMSOL, a company developing mathematical modeling software that drives new breakthroughs in physics and engineering.

 

Webinar – 9th June – 2pm CEST – “The artificial substitution of missing hands“

Our next free webinar will take place on Zoom on June 9th at 2pm CEST. Join us for an enthralling talk on “Artificial substitution of missing hands”!

“The replacement of a missing hand by a prosthesis is one of the most fascinating challenges in rehabilitation engineering. For decades, science and engineering have tried to match the sensory and motor features of the human body, designing limbs aiming at replicating the shape and functionality of the natural counterparts. Building such incredible devices and making them wearable and intuitively controllable by people is the goal of prosthetics research.

This talk aims at providing an overview of past and present artificial prosthetic hands developed and at discussing the main design issues.”

Presentation by Dr. Marco Controzzi (Assistant Professor at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna) and Dr. Francesco Clemente (Managing Director at Prensilia SRL, Affiliate Professional at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna

To know more and register: Events – B-Cratos