Neuroengineering
Neuroengineering includes the topics of computational modeling of neural systems, in vivo clinical and pre-clinical neuroimaging, neurotrauma and repair research, and neuronal tissue engineering.
Neurotrauma and Repair Laboratory
The Neurotrauma and Repair Laboratory, directed by Prof. Barclay Morrison, has a single overarching goal: to reduce the societal costs of traumatic brain injury (TBI), which affects 1.5 million new patients annually at a cost of $69 billion. This laboratory established the first macro-array description of in vitro post-traumatic genomic alterations and correlation of those changes with mechanical injury parameters and developed an organotypic brain slice system for investigating injury biomechanics. Activities include development of stretchable microelectrode arrays for more stable neural prosthesis interfaces, vertically aligned carbon nanofiber electrophysiology arrays, and novel delivery technologies for crossing the blood brain barrier.
The Laboratory for Intelligent Imaging and Neural Computing
The Laboratory for Intelligent Imaging and Neural Computing, directed by Prof. Paul Sajda, was founded with the mission of studying fundamental processing strategies and representations in biological vision to develop artificial vision systems capable of sophisticated and adaptive image and scene analysis. This laboratory develops biophysically realistic network architectures of neural circuitry, which are being applied to problems in medical image analysis including cancer detection.
MR SCIENCE Laboratory
The MR SCIENCE Laboratory, directed by Prof. Christoph Juchem, pursues MR engineering in the fields of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), spectroscopy (MRS) and spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) to advance their clinical potential for the study of neurodegenerative diseases. To this end, MR method developments are combined with state-of-the-art MRI, MRS and MRSI techniques to derive in vivo direct knowledge of the pathobiochemistry underlying clinical conditions such as multiple sclerosis, diabetes or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Memory and Navigation
The Memory and Navigation Laboratory, directed by Prof. Joshua Jacobs, conducts research on the electrophysiology of navigation and memory, brain stimulation, and direct human brain recordings.
Neural Engineering and Control
The Raymond and Beverly Sackler Laboratory for Neural Engineering and Control, led by Prof. Qi Wang, focuses on neural coding in the somatosensory pathway of the brain, brain-machine interfaces, and biomedical instrumentation for creating engineered tactile sensations.