Background & research interests

I have also been invited by Jim to introduce myself. Since I’m about to start, in a couple of weeks, as assistant professor of the Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering at GMU, I thought it would be useful to briefly describe my background, and then discuss my research interests.

My research started with the retinal spreading depression, which is an experimental model for migraine auras. I developed models and demonstrated that this phenomenon can be explained with either cellular automata and/or reaction-diffusion equations that emulate wave propagation in anisotropic media and spiral formation. The results of these experiments constituted my Master’s thesis. Afterwards I developed a test system for the German retina implant project, based on in vitro chicken eyecups, and also tested in vivo stimulation parameters in anesthetized rabbits. I then received a fellowship to design “neuroelectronic arrays”, consisting of two- and three-dimensional microelectrode arrays for recording electrical activity of neurons in culture. After receiving my Ph.D., I went to Stanford University as a postdoc. There I investigated cardiac cell responses to changes in metabolism. Cell cultures were grown on microfabricated Clark-type oxygen sensors, and submitted to various drugs which modulated sensor responses. For the last two years I have been involved in developing seizure control devices and electrode design for low frequency stimulation.

Now that I am about to start my own lab, I intend to continue some of the efforts described above, in particular developing sensors coated with intelligent materials. Intelligent materials are polymers or polymeric coatings which react to environment or substrate stimuli (such as light, voltage, and pH). Potential applications of these sensors are multifold: from tissue engineering and implantable devices to traditional MEMS applications (actuators, development of electronic nose for detection of oil or alcohol in unsafe environments). I’m also interested in the spreading depression phenomenon in slices, in particular under the effect of electric fields. I hypothesize that some symptoms from migraines evolve due to charge imbalance in the nervous system and that they can be modulated experimentally and modeled in a very straightforward way.