PARTNERS

Advisory board

Advisory board

Shih-Chii Liu

Expertise: AI and sensors
Organization: University of Zurich

Prof. Shih-Chii Liu co-directs the Sensors group (http://sensors.ini.uzh.ch) at the Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. The group works on design of neuromorphic event-based spiking auditory and vision sensors; event-driven energy-efficient deep neural network architectures and their hardware implementations; and the use of these networks in bio-inspired artificial intelligent vision and audio systems. The group also works on multi-microphone wireless distributed sensor hardware platforms for auditory scene analysis. Dr. Liu has been the co-organizer of the Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop for the past 5 years.

Jacinta O'Shea

Expertise: Brain stimulation
Organization: University of Oxford

Jacinta O'Shea is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford. She leads the Translational Neurostimulation Laboratory (TiNSL) at the Oxford Centre for Human Brain Activity, part of the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging. Her research combines brain stimulation with neuroimaging and cognitive manipulations to drive adaptive brain plasticity. The ultimate aim is to advance rational therapeutics for brain disorders. Funded by a Sir Henry Dale Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society, the focus of current work is on developing personalized precision stimulation to treat depression.

Manohar Bance

Expertise: Otology
Organization: University of Cambridge

Manohar Bance is an Otologist/Neurotologist and clinician-scientist at Cambridge University, and the inaugural Professor of Otology and Skull Base Surgery at the University of Cambridge, UK. Previously he was Professor and Head of the Division of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck surgery at Dalhousie University until April 2017, where he was  also Director of the EAR and SENSE labs. He runs a research lab at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus and is involved in many areas of biomedical research, particularly in cochlear implant function and testing, and performance, and developing new types of neural stimulation and sensing. 

Richard Normann

Expertise: Biomedical Engineering
Organization: University of Utah

Richard A. Normann, Ph.D. is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Bioengineering and Ophthalmology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City where he conducts research on sensory encoding and information processing by neural ensembles in the vertebrate central and peripheral nervous systems.  He is the inventor of the Utah Electrode Array technologies and other high-electrode-count microelectrode arrays that can be used for basic and applied research in emerging field of neuroprosthetics.  His most recent research interests are the cortically based restoration of vision in those with profound blindness, and peripheral nerve interventions for the restoration of arm function in those who have lost these functions. 

Andrew Schwartz

Expertise: Brain-computer interface
Organization: University of Pittsburgh

Dirk Loeckx

Expertise: Entrepreneurship
Organization: Epihunter

After studying physical engineering at UGent, Dirk Loeckx did a PhD in Medical Image Computing at UZLeuven/KULeuven. From there, he started his first start-up icometrix, bringing advanced image computing from the imaging research group to help doctors, pharma companies and finally people with a disease getting most out of their medical images. With Dirk as CEO, icometrix grew to 20 people, and got CE and FDA approval for their medical device software. After icometrix, Dirk co-founded epihunter as CSO and CFO. Epihunter has developed a CE-approved EEG-based epileptic absence seizure tracker, and is selling it direct-to-consumer. Dirk loves to help enthusiast people shape their ideas and help them go forward.

Marike Broekman

Expertise: Neurosurgery/Ethics
Organization: Haaglanden Medical Centre

Marike L.D. Broekman, MD PhD LLM is a neurosurgeon with a dedicated interest in ethics of surgical innovation and oncology in the Department of Neurosurgery at Haaglanden Medical Center/Leiden University Medical Center and a visiting professor at the Department of Neurology of the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School. She is the current head of Translational Neuro-Oncology and is the PI of a neuro-oncology lab. Dr. Broekman mentors ~15 PhD students and is a (co) PI of several grants to work on  1) developing novel strategies for diagnosis and treatment of brain tumors and 2) ethics of (innovation) in neurosurgery/oncology. She is the author of > 140 peer-reviewed papers as well as the book: “ethics of innovation in neurosurgery”.

Timothy Denison

Expertise: Biomedical engineering
Organization: University of Oxford