Special Announcement!
2009 Brain Machine Interface Workshop
The Center for Innovative Brain Machine Interfaces invites all interested students to an intensive week exploring the science of brain machine interfaces. More information is coming soon!
PIs: Pramod Khargonekar, Jose Principe, Erik Sander
Funded by NSF.
This effort wraps the technology testbeds of the CNEL, NRG (Neuroprostetic Research Group), IML(Integrated Microelectronic Lab) and IEC (Integrated Electronic Center), into virtual companies to conduct technology transfer activities. These activities are conducted through a "Partnership for Innovative Technology Ventures" (PITV) that combines the best aspects of existing programs within Engineering, Medicine, and Business. Three virtual companies, with their own CEO, CTO, and CBO are presently underway, one developing Flexible Microelectrodes, the other Ultra low power devices for remote sensing and a “rat pack” to collect autonomously 64 channels of neural data and wirelessly transmit it to a base station in full resolution. Engineering students learn about entrepreneurship and business thru course work and by teaming with Business School students and faculty, while creating industrial prototypes related to their Ph.D. topics. The Center has an Industrial Advisory Board that meets once a year to pick new promising ideas and evaluating progress of the virtual companies.
Orgainizational Structure of the CIBMI
Our partners are:
- Engineering Office of Industry Programs, lead by Erik Sander
- Center for Entrepreneurship and Education, Warrington College of Business
- Hybrid group lead by Dr. John Harris
- Neuroprosthetics Research Group (NRG) lead by Dr. Justin C. Sanchez
Flexible Substrate Technology for Hybrid-Packaged Implantable Neural Interfaces
CEO: Robert Wilson, III, Senior Project Director, Institute for Human and Machine Cognition
Co-CTOs: Toshi Nishida, Interdisciplinary Microsystems Group
Justin Sanchez, Neuroprosthetics Research Group
CBO: Ted Astleford, Assistant Director, Experiential Learning, Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Engineering team: Erin Patarick, William Rowe, Viswanath Sankar
Business team: Ali Alkan, Christian Tassin
Sensing brain activity with microelectrode arrays is one of the enablers of BMIs. This virtual company product is a flexible microelectrode array that can be fabricated in batch mode using a special combination of materials and micromachining techniques, and can be integrated easily with silicon technology.
Integrate-and-Fire Signal Representation for Ultra-Low Power Sensing Applications
Co-CEOs: Jerry Yachabach (retired) and Neil Euliano, Convergent Engineering
CTO: John Harris, Hybrid Group
CBO: Ted Astleford, Assistant Director, Experiential Learning, Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovationn
Engineering team: Vaibhav Garg, Manu Rastogi, Alex Singh, Ravi Shekhar, Vaibhav Garg, Jie Xu
Business team: Torrey Peace, Rob Castellucci, David Demosthenes, Andrew Mosley
This technology combines a low-power, low-noise integrated amplifier with a novel integrate-and-fire technology, offering a compact, low power and low-bandwidth implantable neural recording solution. This implant will enhance the characterization of brain function via neural recordings in rats in an unrestrained condition. The goal is to produce efficient, wireless recording systems that have higher spatial resolution and lower noise than those currently available.
The Integrate-and-Fire representation provides an ultra-low power mechanism to encode and transmit a signal. The information is losslessly encoded into pulse trains fired from the IF neuron according to specific threshold and leaky settings.
Wireless, Wearable Computers for Brain Machine Interfaces
Co-CEOs: Jerry Yachabach (retired) and Neil Euliano, Convergent Engineering
Co-CTOs: John Harris, Hybrid Group, Karl Gugel, Advanced Digital Design Lab
CBO: Ted Astleford, Assistant Director, Experiential Learning, Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovationn
Engineering team: David Cheney, Stefan Craciun, Sudhir Rao
Business team: Torrey Peace, Rob Castellucci, David Demosthenes, Andrew Mosley
Animals are conventionally tethered to the amplifiers in BMI experiments. Portability of the electronics will allow roaming and will improve the experimental setups. This virtual company product is a low power and portable 64 channel amplifier and wireless transmitter that will free the animals from the wires. We are designing a special analog front end and specialized computer architecture, Pico (pre-fab Nordic board with antenna curcuitry onboard), that will collect and compress 100:1 the neural data such that it will not distort the spikes and allow transmission of 64 channels over a 2 Mbit/sec wireless link.
Industrial Advisory Board Members
- Tracy Cameron, VP Scientific Affairs, Advanced Neuromodulation Systems
- Neil R. Euliano, President, Convergent Engineering
- Booker Schmidt, Executive Director, Technology Enterprise Center of Gainesville/Alachua County
- Danial Rua, Inflexion Partners
- Timothy Tucker, President, Tucker-Davis Technologies
- Frederick Martin, Fellow of the Technical Staff, Motorola Labs
- Patti Breedlove, Manager and Assistant Director, Sid Martin Biotech Development Incubator
- David L. Day, Director, UF Office of Technology Licensing
- Jack R. Smith, CEO, Neurotronics, Inc.
- Jane M. Muir, Director, UF EDA University Center
- Erik A. Bredfeldt, Director, City of Gainesville Department of Economic Development
- Arnold A. Heggestad, Director, UF Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation