The University of Washington’s Center for Neurotechnology (CNT) interviewed Jeff to profile his work. It’s been posted here: CNT Profile
Many thanks to Aleenah Ansari for the write-up!
Team News
Prof. Sam Burden and team (2017-2018 edition)
- Benjamin Chasnov was appointed to the Computational Neuroscience Training Program in Sep. 2018
- Liam Han defended his Masters thesis in Mechanical Engineering in June 2018. Liam’s dissertation was titled “Automating perturbation experiments for a hopping robot using a cable-driven impedance haptic system“. He is now working at Amyris as an automation engineer in Emeryville, CA.
- Tianqi Li defended his Masters thesis in Mechanical Engineering in June 2018. Tianqi’s dissertation was titled “Experimental realization of deadbeat control on a hybrid model of legged locomotion“. He has started his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M in Fall 2018.
- Alyssa Giedd and Clara Orndorff received the UWIN undergraduate fellowship in May 2018
- Alyssa Giedd also received a CSNE UW Undergraduate Fellowship in May 2018
- Momona Yamagami will be publishing a conference paper in Cyber-physical-human systems in Dec 2018 (Please click link for the abstract)
- Momona Yamagami received a WRF Innovation Graduate Fellowship in Neuroengineering in Aug 2017
Fall 2017 Acheivements!
2017 Rudolf E. Kalman Best Paper Award – We are proud to announce that a paper co-authored by Prof. Howard Chizeck received the 2017 Rudolf E. Kalman Best Paper Award presented by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers this year. The paper titled “Electromechanical Modeling and Adaptive Feedforward Control of a Self-Sensing Scanning Fiber Endoscope” can be publicly accessed here. You can also find a news article about the award on the EE website.
EE Research Day Poster (1st Prize) – Andrew Haddock won a $5000 prize during the Electrical Engineering Research Day Poster session.
Ethics in Neural Engineering
CSNE just published an article about work in Neural Engineering done at the BioRobotics Lab. It introduces the importance of having conversations about Neuroethics and the role of our Philosophy Ph.D. student and CSNE member Tim Brown at the lab. Check out the article here.
An article co-authored by Ph.D. student Katherine Pratt on work done in neuroethics and neural security was published on The Conversation. You can read the article at this link.
BRL featured in the Neuroethics Blog
BRL graduate students Tim Brown and Maggie Thompson are featured in a new article on the Neuroethics Blog, about collaboration and the role of ethics in engineering. Learn more here about their research and how they create a synergistic work and research environment.
Neural Security in the news
When VICE Motherboard visited us last month to talk about surgical hacking, they also took some time to learn about the lab’s work on neural security and brain hacking. Several articles are now available:
VICE Motherboard: How Hackers Could Get Inside Your Head With ‘Brain Malware’
Daily Mail UK: Hackers could get inside your BRAIN: Experts warn of growing threat from monitoring and controlling neural signals
Naked Security by Sophos: How hacking brainwaves could reveal our deeply guarded secrets
This research is by Tamara Bonaci, Katherine Pratt, and Howard Chizeck.
Spring and Summer Quarter announcements
Now that we’re in the full swing of summer quarter we’re looking back and highlighting some of the accomplishments of spring quarter and welcoming our summer research students.
Publications:
C. Matlack; H. Chizeck; C. T. Moritz, “Empirical Movement Models for Brain Computer Interfaces,” in IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering , vol.PP, no.99, pp.1-1 doi: 10.1109/TNSRE.2016.2584101
Awards:
Katherine Pratt was awarded as a member of the inaugural Husky 100 class. This award recognizes 100 individuals from across the UW campuses for work in and out of the classroom. Read more from the department here.
Summer Students:
We are super excited to have high school and college students from UW and beyond working with us in the lab this summer:
Hannah is a rising sophomore here at the University of Washington. She’s worked in the lab previously, and is spending the summer working with Andrew Haddock on haptic diagnostic tools for patients with Parkinson’s Disease.
Matt Ehlert is going to be a junior this fall at the University of New Mexico. He’s working with Katherine Pratt and Howard Chizeck on BCI security.
Gabriel Solia is a visiting masters student from Brazil. His work includes the Microsoft Hololens, and he’s working with Sam Burden and Ryan Robinson.
Jane Yi is a high school student working with Gabriel, Sam, and Ryan on the Microsoft Hololens project.
Anisha Uppugonduri is a sophomore here at the University of Washington, and is working with Maggie Thompson.
Nishi Kaza is a rising junior at Skyline High School. He’s working on the touchless touchscreen project.’
Magena Fura (not pictured) is working with us through the CSNE Research Experience for Undergraduates program. She’s working with Maggie Thompson.
Alex Franke (not pictured) is working with us through the CSNE Research Experience for Undergraduates program. He’s working on neuroethics with Tim Brown.
Popular Mechanics features BRL
The Surgeon Will See You Now is one of the latest articles from Popular Mechanics, and it features researchers and work from the BioRobotics Lab. Blake Hannaford discusses the digital infrastructure needed for telerobotic surgery. Howard Chizeck is also interviewed about his student’s research last year involving teleoperation security (available from arXiv: To Make a Robot Secure).
BRL Graduate Student Timothy Brown Wins CSNE Hackathon
Last weekend, BRL graduate student Tim Brown competed in the NSF Engineering Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering‘s second-annual Hackathon. In this competition, fifteen students gathered from the University of Washington, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, San Diego State University, and Spelman College. The contestants formed teams of three; these teams were given 36 hours to develop an innovative technology that addresses some problem related to sensorimotor neural engineering. Tim and his teammates—Rin Yunis from MIT and Jaycee Holmes from Spelman—were awarded first place! Congratulations!
Click here to read more about the competition.
BRL graduate student Katherine Pratt wins CSNE Perfect Pitch Competition!
Last Friday, BRL-affiliated graduate students Katherine Pratt and Tim Brown competed in the NSF Engineering Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering Perfect Pitch competition. The competition challenges students to condense their research into a 90 second elevator pitch that succinctly conveys the goals and value of their work. Each pitch is then judged by a panel of CSNE-affiliated industry members and entrepreneurs on both the merit of the work and the presentation sytle. When the final results were tallied, Katherine was awarded with first place in the competition! A video of her pitch is included below. Congratulations Katherine!