Olivier Pierre ChételatTeaching & PhD Courses Sensors in medical instrumentation EE-511 Fundamental principles and methods used for physiological signal conditioning. Electrode, optical, resistive, capacitive, inductive, and piezoelectric sensor techniques used to detect and convert physiological information to electrical signals. Medical devices for physiological signal monitoring.
Henry MarkramHenry Markram started a dual scientific and medical career at the University of Cape Town, in South Africa. His scientific work in the 80s revealed the polymodal receptive fields of pontomedullary reticular formation neurons in vivo and how acetylcholine re-organized these sensory maps.
He moved to Israel in 1988 and obtained his PhD at the Weizmann Institute where he discovered a link between acetylcholine and memory mechanisms by being the first to show that acetylcholine modulates the NMDA receptor in vitro studies, and thereby gates which synapses can undergo synaptic plasticity. He was also the first to characterize the electrical and anatomical properties of the cholinergic neurons in the medial septum diagonal band.
He carried out a first postdoctoral study as a Fulbright Scholar at the NIH, on the biophysics of ion channels on synaptic vesicles using sub-fractionation methods to isolate synaptic vesicles and patch-clamp recordings to characterize the ion channels. He carried out a second postdoctoral study at the Max Planck Institute, as a Minerva Fellow, where he discovered that individual action potentials propagating back into dendrites also cause pulsed influx of Ca2 into the dendrites and found that sub-threshold activity could also activated a low threshold Ca2 channel. He developed a model to show how different types of electrical activities can divert Ca2 to activate different intracellular targets depending on the speed of Ca2 influx an insight that helps explain how Ca2 acts as a universal second messenger. His most well known discovery is that of the millisecond watershed to judge the relevance of communication between neurons marked by the back-propagating action potential. This phenomenon is now called Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity (STDP), which many laboratories around the world have subsequently found in multiple brain regions and many theoreticians have incorporated as a learning rule. At the Max-Planck he also started exploring the micro-anatomical and physiological principles of the different neurons of the neocortex and of the mono-synaptic connections that they form - the first step towards a systematic reverse engineering of the neocortical microcircuitry to derive the blue prints of the cortical column in a manner that would allow computer model reconstruction.
He received a tenure track position at the Weizmann Institute where he continued the reverse engineering studies and also discovered a number of core principles of the structural and functional organization such as differential signaling onto different neurons, models of dynamic synapses with Misha Tsodyks, the computational functions of dynamic synapses, and how GABAergic neurons map onto interneurons and pyramidal neurons. A major contribution during this period was his discovery of Redistribution of Synaptic Efficacy (RSE), where he showed that co-activation of neurons does not only alter synaptic strength, but also the dynamics of transmission. At the Weizmann, he also found the tabula rasa principle which governs the random structural connectivity between pyramidal neurons and a non-random functional connectivity due to target selection. Markram also developed a novel computation framework with Wolfgang Maass to account for the impact of multiple time constants in neurons and synapses on information processing called liquid computing or high entropy computing.
In 2002, he was appointed Full professor at the EPFL where he founded and directed the Brain Mind Institute. During this time Markram continued his reverse engineering approaches and developed a series of new technologies to allow large-scale multi-neuron patch-clamp studies. Markrams lab discovered a novel microcircuit plasticity phenomenon where connections are formed and eliminated in a Darwinian manner as apposed to where synapses are strengthening or weakened as found for LTP. This was the first demonstration that neural circuits are constantly being re-wired and excitation can boost the rate of re-wiring.
At the EPFL he also completed the much of the reverse engineering studies on the neocortical microcircuitry, revealing deeper insight into the circuit design and built databases of the blue-print of the cortical column. In 2005 he used these databases to launched the Blue Brain Project. The BBP used IBMs most advanced supercomputers to reconstruct a detailed computer model of the neocortical column composed of 10000 neurons, more than 340 different types of neurons distributed according to a layer-based recipe of composition and interconnected with 30 million synapses (6 different types) according to synaptic mapping recipes. The Blue Brain team built dozens of applications that now allow automated reconstruction, simulation, visualization, analysis and calibration of detailed microcircuits. This Proof of Concept completed, Markrams lab has now set the agenda towards whole brain and molecular modeling.
With an in depth understanding of the neocortical microcircuit, Markram set a path to determine how the neocortex changes in Autism. He found hyper-reactivity due to hyper-connectivity in the circuitry and hyper-plasticity due to hyper-NMDA expression. Similar findings in the Amygdala together with behavioral evidence that the animal model of autism expressed hyper-fear led to the novel theory of Autism called the Intense World Syndrome proposed by Henry and Kamila Markram. The Intense World Syndrome claims that the brain of an Autist is hyper-sensitive and hyper-plastic which renders the world painfully intense and the brain overly autonomous. The theory is acquiring rapid recognition and many new studies have extended the findings to other brain regions and to other models of autism.
Markram aims to eventually build detailed computer models of brains of mammals to pioneer simulation-based research in the neuroscience which could serve to aggregate, integrate, unify and validate our knowledge of the brain and to use such a facility as a new tool to explore the emergence of intelligence and higher cognitive functions in the brain, and explore hypotheses of diseases as well as treatments.
Olexiy KochubeyTeaching & PhD PhD Students Nishant Jana Past EPFL PhD Students as codirector Aiste Baleisyte, Denys Osypenko Courses Neural circuits of motivated behaviors BIO-499 Motivated behaviors fulfil the basic physiological needs of animals and enable their safety. In this course, you will learn about the neuronal circuits that sense and regulate internal states, detect dangers in the environment, and organize appropriate behavioral responses.
Alexander MathisAlexander studied pure mathematics with a minor in logic and theory of science at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. For his PhD also at LMU, he worked on optimal coding approaches to elucidate the properties of grid cells. As a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Venkatesh N. Murthy at Harvard University and Prof. Matthias Bethge at Tuebingen AI, he decided to study olfactory behaviors such as odor-guided navigation, social behaviors and the cocktail party problem in mice. During this time, he increasingly got interested sensorimotor behaviors beyond olfaction and started working on proprioception, motor adaption, as well as computer vision tools for measuring animal behavior.
In his group, he is interested in elucidating how the brain gives rise to adaptive behavior. One of the major goals is to synthesize large datasets into computationally useful information. For those purposes, he develops algorithms and systems to analyze animal behavior (e.g. DeepLabCut), neural data, as well as creates experimentally testable computational models.
Raphaël DoenlenEducation Master | Neurosciences 2004 – 2004 University of Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg (France) Master | Psycho-pharmacology 2005 – 2005 University of Bordeaux 1 (France) PhD | Life Sciences - Neuro-immunology 2005 – 2008 Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zürich (Switzerland) Directed by Principal supervisor: Prof. Joram Feldon, Institute of Behavioural Neurobiology, ETH Zürich (Switzerland)Co-supervisor: Prof. Manfred S
Fosco Bernasconi2014-Present:
post-doc at the EPFL, Laboratory of Congitive Neuroscience.
2012-2014:
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Charité University Medicine, Berlin, Germany.
2012:
Postdoctoral Research Associate,Psychiatric University Hospital (PUK), Zurich, Switzerland.
2008-2011:
PhD in Neurosciences,Lemanic Neurosciences Doctoral School, Faculty of Biology and Medicine, Lausanne University, Switzerland.
2007-2008:
Master in Medical Biology,Faculty of Biology & Medicine, Lausanne University,Switzerland.
Touradj EbrahimiTouradj EBRAHIMI received his M.Sc. and Ph.D., both in Electrical Engineering, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1989 and 1992 respectively. In 1993, he was a research engineer at the Corporate Research Laboratories of Sony Corporation in Tokyo, where he conducted research on advanced video compression techniques for storage applications. In 1994, he served as a research consultant at AT&T Bell Laboratories working on very low bitrate video coding. He is currently Professor at EPFL heading its Multimedia Signal Processing Group. He is also the Convenor of JPEG standardization Committee. He was also adjunct Professor with the Center of Quantifiable Quality of Service at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)from 2008 to 2012.
Prof. Ebrahimi has been the recipient of various distinctions and awards, such as the IEEE and Swiss national ASE award, the SNF-PROFILE grant for advanced researchers, Four ISO-Certificates for key contributions to MPEG-4 and JPEG 2000, and the best paper award of IEEE Trans. on Consumer Electronics . He became a Fellow of the international society for optical engineering (SPIE) in 2003. Prof. Ebrahimi has initiated more than two dozen National, European and International cooperation projects with leading companies and research institutes around the world. He is a co-founder of Genista SA, a high-tech start-up company in the field of multimedia quality metrics. In 2002, he founded Emitall SA, start-up active in the area of media security and surveillance. In 2005, he founded EMITALL Surveillance SA, a start-up active in the field of privacy and protection. He is or has been associate Editor with various IEEE, SPIE, and EURASIP journals, such as IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, IEEE Trans. on Image Processing, IEEE Trans. on Multimedia, EURASIP Image Communication Journal, EURASIP Journal of Applied Signal Processing, SPIE Optical Engineering Magazine. Prof. Ebrahimi is a member of Scientific Advisory Board of various start-up and established companies in the general field of Information Technology. He has served as Scientific Expert and Evaluator for Research Funding Agencies such as those of European Commission, The Greek Ministry of Development, The Austrian National Foundation for Scientific Research, The Portuguese Science Foundation, as well as a number of Venture Capital Companies active in the field of Information Technologies and Communication Systems. His research interests include still, moving, and 3D image processing and coding, visual information security (rights protection, watermarking, authentication, data integrity, steganography), new media, and human computer interfaces (smart vision, brain computer interface).
He is the author or the co-author of more than 200 research publications, and holds 14 patents. Prof. Ebrahimi is a member of IEEE, SPIE, ACM and IS&T.
See the URL below for more details:
http://mmspl.epfl.ch Bruno HerbelinSince 10/09 - Scientist Laboratory of cognitive neuroscience Brain & Mind Institute, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. 06/12 - 10/19 Deputy Director Center for Neuroprosthetics École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. 11/05 - 09/09 Assistant Professor Aalborg University Esbjerg Institute of Technology & Copenhagen Institute of Technology, Denmark. 07/01 - 09/05 Research assistant PhD student Virtual Reality Laboratory School of Computer and Communications, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland.
Jevita PotheegadooAs a clinical neuropsychologist, I appreciate working with clinical populations, as I constantly learn a lot from the patients, enriching my knowledge not only on the illness but also on clinical and research practice.
I graduated from the University of Strasbourg (France), and obtained a Master's degree in clinical neuropsychology in 2005 from the University of Caen Basse-Normandie (France). I integrated the Psychiatry Department of the University Hospitals of Strasbourg as a neuropsychologist and pursued both clinical and research work on schizophrenia (INSERM unit). I investigated autobiographical memory impairment and self disorders in patients with schizophrenia, and obtained a Ph.D. in neuroscience (University of Strasbourg) in 2014. I joined the Blanke Lab (LNCO) as scientific collaborator in 2016.
Solaiman Shokur2019 - now : Senior Scientist, Translational neuroengineering Laboratory, EPFL(Geneva)
Team leader: CHRONOS project, a multi-center European project that aims at developing the first chronically implanted prosthetic hand for transradial amputee patients with bidirectional communication capabilities. NCCR Robotics: Bi-directional control of supernumerary limbs.2014-2019: Research Coordinator, AASDAP (São Paulo, Brazil) Responsible for both the scientific production and the clinical protocol at the AASDAP neurorehabilitation laboratory.
2013-2014: Postdoctoral associate, Walk again project, Insituto Santos Dumond. (Natal, RN, Brazil)Head of the engineering team in charge of the system integration. 2010-2012: Visiting scientist, Nicolelis Lab (Duke University).
Development and validation of a virtual-reality based brain-machine interface for rhesus monkeys.
2007 – 2010: Teaching assistant, Laboratory of Robotics Systems (EPFL)
Herbert SheaExpertise
soft robotics, wearable haptics, electrostatic actuators, EHD
Mission
My lab develops flexible polymer-based actuators for a wide range of applications including haptics and soft robotics. More info at https://www.epfl.ch/labs/lmts/
Links from EPFL-LMTS Lab webpage People Research ActivitiesPublications TeachingPublications and Conference papers Link to my lab Education PhD | Physics 1997 – 1997 Harvard University MA | Physics 1993 – 1993 Harvard University Fabio ZulianiAssemblée d'école - Candidacy After starting my studies in Microengineering at EPFL in 2012, I quickly became involved in the representation of the students, first as class representative for 4 years, then as Student Body Member for the Conseil de Faculté STI and finally as Vice-president of the AGEPoly (EPFL's Students Union) for a one-year term in 2015-2016. After pursuing my Master Thesis at Northeastern University (Boston, Massachusetts), I came back to work in a startup in EPFL-Fribourg for one year
