DeLuca Virtual Symposium
“Neural Interfaces for the Control of Robotic Limbs”
June 12, 4:00pm CEDT, 10:00am EDT, 11:00pm JDT
The ISEK Early Career Researcher Committee is pleased to announce the second edition of the DeLuca Symposium, a virtual event highlighting research from senior and early-/mid-career scientists on topics of interest to trainees, from undergraduate students to early-career researchers.
Neural interfaces are systems that allow patients to control computers or robotic limbs using neural activity. These interfaces often combine recording technologies-such as electromyography-with decoding algorithms that translate motor intent into machine-interpretable commands. Despite promising advances, current neural interfaces remain largely inaccessible to patients, often lack robustness, and demand sustained cognitive effort to produce a limited range of commands.
In this symposium, we will showcase recent work by researchers and clinicians on topics including spike sorting and neural decoding algorithms, control paradigms for robotic limbs, neural plasticity associated with the use of these tools, and clinical strategies for training patients to use their robotic limbs effectively.
The DeLuca Symposium is lead by the 2024 Carlo J. DeLuca Award winner Simon Avrillon with support from the Communications Committee.
Registration is FREE but attendees must register to participate.
Irene Mendez Guerra
Imperial College London
Speaker Biography
Dr. Irene Mendez Guerra is an Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Bioengineering, at Imperial College London, where she researches neural control of movement at the peripheral level using AI models. After earning her PhD in wearable neural interfaces from Imperial College London in 2024, Dr. Mendez Guerra was awarded the EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellowship. Apart from her academic endeavours, Dr. Mendez Guerra also carried out a research internship at Meta in 2022, and was the leader of Imperial’s Arm team in the Cybathlon 2020 competition. Her research combines signal processing, machine learning, and electrophysiology to develop novel neural decoding algorithms, human-machine interfaces, and physiological models.
Hunter Schone
University of Pittsburgh
Speaker Biography
Dr. Hunter Schone, PhD, is a postdoctoral research fellow within Rehab Neural Engineering Labs at the University of Pittsburgh, researching the capacity for brain plasticity in the adult brain to support controlling next-generation assistive technologies (myoelectric prosthetics and brain-computer interfaces). Dr. Schone obtained his MSc and PhD between University College London and the National Institutes of Health.
Agnes Sturma
University of Applied Sciences Campus Vienna
Speaker Biography
Dr. Sturma is Head of Physiotherapy at the University of Applied Sciences Campus Vienna. She has a Bachelor Degree in Physiotherapy, a Master ‘s Degree in Health Assisting Engineering and a Doctoral Degree in Applied Medical Sciences/Clinical Neuroscience. She has been working at the Medical University of Vienna since 2012. There, she is involved in rehabilitation and research projects with individuals with upper limb loss, nerve injuries or central nervous disorders.