A new experimental laboratory at the Institute of Information and Communication Technologies of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IICT) will be established under the “VIBraTE” project, funded by the Horizon Europe programme. This was announced by Assoc. Prof. Dimiter Prodanov who presented the planned activities of the project and gave a lecture at BAS on the perspectives of neurotechnologies.
The “VIBraTE” project has started in February 2023 and will last until 31 January 2028. The Director of IICT Corr. Mem. Svetozar Margenov, who opened the event, specified that so far in Bulgaria such an innovative project had not been implemented.
Assoc. Prof. Dimiter Prodanov works at IICT and shares a position at the Imec Centre for Nano-Electronics in Leuven (Belgium), which is the world-leading research and development hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies.
In his lecture Assoc. Prof. Prodanov spoke about the brain-computer interface, a technology that records brain signals and transmits them to an external command and feedback device. He outlined the main areas of work on the project – highly elastic interactions of the implant with the tissue, optimization of sensor geometry, diffusion processes of the interface, effects of the interaction on brain activity.
The lab will model and investigate the properties, geometry and mechanical effects of brain interaction with implanted electrodes. The expected results will lead to the development of new technologies for the treatment of neurological diseases.
Neurotechnologies are a class of engineering applications for interacting with the nervous system. The lecture highlights the technological progress in the development of multi-channel CMOS sensors at the leading research center Imec and the issues of interaction of implants with brain tissue. Understanding how implanted electrodes interact with brain tissue will help to develop new generations of devices.
Assoc. Prof. Dimiter Prodanov started his scientific work at Imec, where he conducted research related to the development of deep brain stimulation and high-density recordings from the brain. Since 2013, Assoc. Prof. Prodanov is an associate researcher at the Neuroelectronics Research Flanders institute (NERF). He has developments in computational biology and therapeutic modulation of brain activity and risk assessment of bio and nanotechnology. His technical interests include applications of computer algebra tools and numerical algorithms for modelling biophysical phenomena and image processing. Since 2009, Assoc. Prof. Prodanov has been also working in the new scientific area Neuroinformatics.
See the academic lecture at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp20VD29yUc
