Srikanth RamaswamyDr. Srikanth Ramaswamy is a group leader and senior scientist in the Blue Brain Project. He leads a multidisciplinary group at the interface of experimental neurophysiology and large-scale computational modeling to investigate the organising principles of neuromodulatory mechanisms that shape neocortical network dynamics.Srikanth graduated from the National Institute of Engineering in Mysore, India with a first class honours degree in Electrical engineering in 2002. In 2003, he was awarded a British Cheveni
Alessandra GriffaCurrent work
In recent years developments in graph theoretical analysis have been more and more applied to the study and characterization of both functional and structural brain networks. The human connectome has been characterized as a small-world, modular, hierarchical network, with few central nodes acting as connectors between local communities, and highly interconnected between them. This brain characterization is common to both structural and functional connectivity. Nevertheless the correlation betwe
Felix SchürmannFelix Schürmann is co-director of the Blue Brain Project and involved in several research challenges of the European Human Brain Project. He studied physics at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, supported by the German National Academic Foundation. Later, as a Fulbright Scholar, he obtained his Master's degree (M.S.) in Physics from the State University of New York, Buffalo, USA, under the supervision of Richard Gonsalves. During these studies, he became curious about the role of different computing substrates and dedicated his master thesis to the simulation of quantum computing. He studied for his Ph.D. at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, under the supervision of Karlheinz Meier. For his thesis he co-designed an efficient implementation of a neural network in hardware.
Sean Lewis HillSean Hill is co-Director of Blue Brain, a Swiss national brain initiative, where he leads the Neuroinformatics division, based at the Campus Biotech in Geneva, Switzerland. He also directs the Laboratory for the Neural Basis of Brain States at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Dr. Hill served as the Executive Director (2011-2013) and Scientific Director (2014-2016) of the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF) at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. Dr. Hill has extensive experience in building and simulating large-scale models of brain circuitry and has also supervised and led research efforts exploring the principles underlying the structure and dynamics of neocortical and thalamocortical microcircuitry. He currently serves in management and advisory roles on several large-scale clinical informatics initiatives around the world. After completing his Ph.D. in computational neuroscience at the Université de Lausanne, Switzerland, Dr. Hill held postdoctoral positions at The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, then joined the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center where he served as the Project Manager for Computational Neuroscience at Blue Brain until his appointment at the EPFL.
Sandro CarraraSandro Carrara is an IEEE Fellow for his outstanding record of accomplishments in the field of design of nanoscale biological CMOS sensors. He is also the recipient of the IEEE Sensors Council Technical Achievement Award in 2016 for his leadership in the emerging area of co-design in Bio/Nano/CMOS interfaces. He is a Professor of the EPFL in Lausanne (Switzerland), and head of the "Bio/CMOS Interfaces" (BCI) research group. He is former professor of optical and electrical biosensors at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Biophysics (DIBE) of the University of Genoa (Italy) and former professor of nanobiotechnology at the University of Bologna (Italy). He holds a PhD in Biochemistry & Biophysics from University of Padua (Italy), a Master degree in Physics from University of Genoa (Italy), and a diploma in Electronics from National Institute of Technology in Albenga (Italy). His scientific interests are on electrical phenomena of nano-bio-structured films, and include CMOS design of biochips based on proteins and DNA. Along his carrier, he published 7 books, one as author with Springer on Bio/CMOS interfaces and, more recently, a Handbook of Bioelectronics with Cambridge University Press. He has more than 250 scientific publications and is author of 13 patents. He is now Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Sensors Journal, the largest journal among 2019 IEEE publications; he is also founder and Editor-in-Chief of the journal BioNanoScience by Springer, and Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems. He is a member of the IEEE Sensors Council and his Executive Committee. He was a member of the Board of Governors (BoG) of the IEEE Circuits And Systems Society (CASS). He has been appointed as IEEE Sensors Council Distinguished Lecturer for the years 2017-2019, and CASS Distinguished Lecturer for the years 2013-2014. His work received several international recognitions: several Top-25 Hottest-Articles (2004, 2005, 2008, 2009, and two times in 2012) published in highly ranked international journals such as Biosensors and Bioelectronics, Sensors and Actuators B, IEEE Sensors journal, and Thin Solid Films; a NATO Advanced Research Award in 1996 for the original contribution to the physics of single-electron conductivity in nano-particles; six Best Paper Awards at the IEEE Sensors Conference 2019 (Montreal) in 2019, Conferences IEEE NGCAS in 2017 (Genoa), MOBIHEALTH in 2016 (Milan), IEEE PRIME in 2015 (Glasgow), in 2010 (Berlin), and in 2009 (Cork); three Best Poster Awards at the EMBEC Conference in 2017 (Tampere, Finland), Nanotera workshop in 2011 (Bern), and NanoEurope Symposium in 2009 (Rapperswil). He also received the Best Referees Award from the journal Biosensor and Bioelectronics in 2006. From 1997 to 2000, he was a member of an international committee at the ELETTRA Synchrotron in Trieste. From 2000 to 2003, he was scientific leader of a National Research Program (PNR) in the filed of Nanobiotechnology. He was an internationally esteemed expert of the evaluation panel of the Academy of Finland in a research program for the years 2010-2013. He has been the General Chairman of the Conference IEEE BioCAS 2014, the premier worldwide international conference in the area of circuits and systems for biomedical applications
Lijing XinLijing Xin is a research staff scientist and 7T MR Operational Manager at the Center for Biomedical Imaging (CIBM), Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. Her research interests focus on developing cutting-edge magnetic resonance spectroscopy and imaging methods for better understanding the brain function and the pathophysiology of neurological diseases. Her journey on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) started from her master project during 2002-2005, where she developed a gradient unit with eddy current compensation and a pulse sequence generator for MRI spectrometer, which enhanced her knowledge in MR instrumentation. Later, she obtained her PhD in physics from Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in 2010, where she focused on developing various novel 1H and 13C magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) acquisition and quantification methods as well as RF coils on high field preclinical MR scanners. Afterwards, she started working on the clinical MR platforms including both 3 and 7T and continued to improve and develop novel acquisition and quantification methods for 1H, 13C and 31P nuclei. She carries on interdisciplinary collaborations with different partners, particularly with clinical partners where translational strategies are performed to explore the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders and disease biomarkers for early diagnose and intervention.
Ralf SchneggenburgerTeaching & PhD PhD Students Nishant Jana, Runzhong Zhang, Jinyun Wu, Elena Mombelli Past EPFL PhD Students Le Xiao, Yunyun Han, Özgür Genç, Elin Kronander, Enida Gjoni, Wei Tang, Ayah Khubieh, Aiste Baleisyte, Shriya Palchaudhuri, Denys Osypenko, Bei-Xuan Lin 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 int
