NPC Fellows

With funding from the Neurophotonics Center’s CAN DO award, graduate student Kate Herrema will advance her thesis project on combining biomaterials, neurorecording devices, stem cell technology and in vivo imaging to guide the development of human cortical organoids transplanted in the mouse brain. Working with faculty from across the Charles River (Tim O’Shea, Martin Thunemann, Anna Devor) and Medical (Ella Zeldich) campuses, this project bridges the two schools in one, convergent project, and will establish new methods and tools for other stem cell investigators within the NPC and beyond. To read more on Kate’s award and project, read here.

Thanks to the fall 2024 Neurophotonics Center Collaborative Project award, PhD student Regina Slotsky will take part in the “exoWALK” project: EXOsuit-assisted Walking Automaticity and Locomotion Kinetics. Working with Associate Professor Lou Awad and Professor David Boas, Regina will help to advance methodological approaches to measuring the automaticity of walking using fNIRS, as well as multi-objective soft robotic exosuit parameter tuning and single trial real-time applications of fNIRS during post-stroke walking––such as the association between functional connectivity and walking quality. The team has already developed a soft, wearable robotic exosuit that provides external mechanical assistance to the paretic limb, and have produced solid results. To read more on her work, read Regina’s article post here.

Through a collaboration with the fNIRS core of the Neurophotonics Center, and following Professor Kamal Sens $2.96M NSF Award, graduate student Sudan Duwadi will be working with Professor Sen to use fNIRS measurements with a wearable system and machine learning methods to decode where a subject is attending in a complex scene. To read more on Sudan’s award, read his post here. To learn more about Professor Sen’s NSF award, read the article here.