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Focused ultrasound (FUS) brain stimulation is an emerging minimally invasive brain interface that combines high spatial resolution with high depth of penetration. Even though FUS has shown great promise for the treatment of a vast range of neurological diseases, existing FUS stimulators are still bulky, power inefficient and with limited volumetric spatial resolution.

The project proposal UPSIDE - “Focused Ultrasound Personalized Therapy for the Treatment of Depression.”, was granted in the EU call EIC Pathfinder challenge: Tools to measure and stimulate activity in brain tissue (HORIZON-EIC-2021-PATHFINDERCHALLENGES-01-02).

Our recent work on ultrasound neurotechnologies and power-efficient neuronal stimulation was accepted for the upcoming IEEE EMBC (congrats to Ignas and Cesc!) and IEEE IUS (Congrats to Gandhi!). More information about the conferences: IEEE EMBC: https://embc.

Ultrasound powering of implantable devices and focused ultrasound neuromodulation demand high-precision 2D ultrasound transmit beamformer chips. Check our approach towards this goal in our recent IEEE TbioCAS paper. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9484838/

A project done at Columbia University (Lead PI: Ken Shepard, Lead Co-Pi: Elisa Konofagou, Main author: Chen Shi) was recently published in Science Advances. Here, we have developed the smallest wireless implantable device to date, with a volume below 0.

Together with Andreas Hartel (Columbia University) and Wojciech Kopec (Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry), we will work on an interdisciplinary approach to unravel the fundamental mechanisms of focused ultrasound neuromodulation.

Link to paper: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9123635/

In the July 2019 issue of ETV’s Maxwell Magazine on the topic of Integration, you can find an article of our research on Neuronal Ultrasound Stimulation: https://etv.tudelft.nl/file/358?view (Pages 38-41)

I will start my appointment at TU Delft as a tenure-track assistant professor on October 1st 2019. I will be working on minimally invasive neuromodulation devices for both neuroscience and clinical applications.