PLEN-2: Advances in Neural Engineering

Date: Wednesday, March 17, 08:15 - 09:30

Presented by

Metin Akay, University of Houston

Abstract

Neural Engineering is a new discipline which unites engineering, computer science, physics, chemistry, and mathematics with cellular, molecular, cognitive and behavioral neurosciences, to understand the organizational principles and underlying mechanisms of the biology of neural systems, and to study the behavior dynamics and complexities of neural systems in nature. Therefore, it deals with many aspects of basic and clinical problems associated with neural dysfunction including the representation of sensory and motor information, the electrical stimulation of the neuromuscular system to control the muscle activation and movement, the analysis and visualization of complex neural systems at multi-scale from the single-cell and to the system levels to understand the underlying mechanisms, the development of novel electronic and photonic devices and techniques for experimental probing, the neural simulation studies, and the design and development of human-machine interface systems and artificial vision sensors and neural prosthesis to restore and enhance the impaired sensory and motor systems and functions from gene to system.

Furthermore, the neuroscience has become more quantitative and information-driven science since emerging implantable and wearable sensors from macro to nano and computational tools facilitate collection and analysis of vast amounts of neural data. Complexity analysis of neural systems provides physiological knowledge for the organization, management and mining of neural data by using advanced computational tools since the neurological data are inherently complex and non-uniform and collected at multiple temporal and spatial scales. The investigations of complex neural systems and processes require an extensive collaboration between biologists, mathematicians, computer scientists and engineering to improve our understanding of complex neurological process from system to gene.

To highlight this emerging discipline, we devote this talk to the neural engineering related research including the recent advances in neural prostheses, nano neuro-implants, neuro-robotics, cognitive engineering, neural signal and image processing and modeling, and brain computer interface from hardware to experimentation.

Speaker Biography

Photo of Metin Akay

Metin Akay received his B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey in 1981 and 1984, respectively and a Ph.D. degree from Rutgers University in 1990. He is currently a professor at the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering at ASU. Beginning January 2010, he will become the founding chair of the new Biomedical Engineering Department and the John S. Dunn professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Houston. He has played a key role in promoting biomedical education in the world by writing and editing several books, editing several special issues of prestigious journals, including the Proc of IEEE, and giving several keynote and plenary talks at international conferences, symposiums and workshops regarding emerging technologies in biomedical engineering.

He is the founding editor-in-chief of the Biomedical Engineering Book Series published by the Wiley and IEEE Press and the Wiley Encyclopedia of Biomedical Engineering. He is also the editor of the Neural Engineering Handbook published by Wiley/IEEE Press and the first steering committee chair of the IEEE Trans on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics.

He established the Annual International Summer School on Biocomplexity from Gene to System sponsored by the NSF and the IEEE EMBS and is the founding chair of the IEEE EMBS Special Topic Conference on Neural Engineering. He is also the chair of the IEEE EMBS Neuroengineering Technical Committee. He was the program chair of the International IEEE EMBS 2001 and the co-chair of the International IEEE EMBS 2006.

He currently serves on the advisory board of several international journals including the IEEE T-BME, IEEE T-ITIB, Smart Engineering Systems etc. and furthermore serves on several NIH and NSF review panels

Dr. Akay is a recipient of the IEEE EMBS Early Career and Service awards as well an IEEE Third Millenium Medal and is a fellow of IEEE and the Institute of Physics. His Neural Engineering and Informatics Lab is interested in developing an intelligent wearable system for monitoring motor functions in Post-Stroke Hemiplegic Patients and detecting coronary artery disease. In addition, his lab is currently investigating the effect of nicotine on the dynamics of ventral tegmental area (VTA) dopamine neural networks.