Nano for N^3 workshop announcement

Reminder - Today and Tomorrow

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Workshop Title  - Nanotechnology as an Enabler for Neuroscience, Neuroengineering and Neural Prostheses (Nano for N^3)
When - Thursday, December 11, 2008 (8 AM - 6 PM), Friday, December 12, 2008 (8 AM - 1 PM)
Where - Stanford University, Allen Center for Integrated Systems, Cypress conference room (CISX 101)
Local hotels - Westin Palo Alto - http://www.starwoodhotels.com/westin/property/overview/index.html?propertyID=1198
                   alternatives - http://www.paloaltoonline.com/lodging/
Workshop organizers - Professor Krishna Shenoy (shenoy@stanford.edu) and Professor Yoshio Nishi (nishi@ee.stanford.edu)

Registration - http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ELU8fQDmb2NyfkLhDhjIwQ_3d_3d

Goals of the workshop

Neural prostheses aim to help improve the quality of life for patients suffering from neurological disease and injury. They function by translating electrical signals from the brain (e.g., action potentials, local field potentials, ECoGs,EEGs) into control signals for guiding assistive devices. Despite considerable progress in recent years, the field actively continues to pursue

(1) increased sensor lifetime and
(2) increased system performance so that the anticipated quality-of-life improvements will clearly outweigh potential surgical risks.

Despite ongoing efforts in recent years, neither sensor lifetime nor system performance have grown at a rate necessary to dramatically enable the widespread clinical translation of these systems. MEMS-based electrode arrays have had functional lifetimes of approximately one year without substantial improvement. While flexible substrate and pharmacological agent delivery through micro-fluidic channels appears promising, there is considerable interest in understanding what nano-structured electrical and/or optical sensors which reside at the size scale of neurons (< 1 um) may enable. Similarly, system performance relies on massively parallel measurement of neural signals and MEMS based measurement has remained at roughly 100-200 neurons for the past decade. There is considerable interest in understanding what massively parallel, nano-structured electrical and/or optical sensors ­ which could provide both the high-density measurements within one brain/neural area, and measurement from multiple brain areas separated by many centimeters ­ may provide.  Advances in both of these areas are crucial for the sustained advancement of both basic systems neuroscience ­ which aims to provide fundamental scientific understanding of complex nervous systems, and may generate biologically-inspired computational principles for next generation electronic computational architectures - as well as more applied neuroengineering, which aims to build core technology.

The major goals of the workshop are:
- To build bridges and promote collaborations between the neuroscience, neuroengineering, neural prosthesis and nanotechnology/sensor communities.
- To identify limitations in current neural-measurement technologies and critical needs for basic neuroscience, neuroengineering, and clinical neural prostheses.
- To identify potential solutions to these needs based on recent progress in nano- and micro-technology.
- To identify how NNIN can best leverage its tools, user base and staff expertise to enable these goals.

Tentative agenda

Thursday, December 11, 2008

8:30 AM - opening remarks, Professor Yoshio Nishi, Stanford, Professor Krishna Shenoy, Stanford
9:00 AM - Professor William Newsome, Stanford University - "The Need for Measuring/Perturbing Neural Activity for Basic Neuroscience and Prostheses"
9:30 AM - Professor Jose Carmena, UC Berkeley - "Technology constraints for bidirectional brain-machine interfaces"
10:00 AM - Professor Daryl Kipke, University of Michigan - "Micro- and nano-scaled implantable devices for high-fidelity, chronic neural interfaces in neuroprosthetic and scientific applications"
10:30 AM - break
11:00 AM - Professor Florian Solzbacher, University of Utah - "Next Generation Neural Interfaces - Bridging the Gap Between Engineering and Healthcare"
11:30 AM - Professor Wentai Liu, UC Santa Cruz - "Integration and Miniaturization of Neural Implants"
12 noon - lunch
1:00 PM - Professor Mark Wrightman, UNC - "Monitoring Chemical Neurotransmission and Single Unit Activity Simultaneously"
1:30 PM - Professor Paul Garris, Illinois State University - "Toward a Smart Deep Brain Stimulator with Chemical Sensing Feedback for Control"
2:00 PM -  Professor Daniel Palanker, Stanford University - "Optoelectronic Retinal Prosthesis for Restoring Sight to the Blind"
2:30 PM - Professor Ellis Meng, USC - "Hybrid Neural Interfaces and Implantable Drug Delivery Systems Enabled by BioMEMS"
3:00 PM - Professor Edward Keefer, UT Southwestern - "Characteristics of carbon nanotube neural interfaces"
3:30 PM - break
4:00 PM - Professor Bruce Wheeler, University Illinois, Urbana Champaign - "Brain on a Chip: Progress in its Design and Construction"
4:30 PM - Dr. Vijendra Sahi, Nanosys Inc. - title TBD
5:00 PM - Professor Mark Schnitzer, Stanford University - "Of Mice, Men, and Microscopes: Imaging cellular dyamics of motor control in behaving subjects"
5:30 PM - Professor Karl Deisseroth, Stanford University - "Optogenetics: Development and Application"

Friday December 12, 2008

8:30 AM - Breakout group discussion - "Neuro-Nano Needs and Opportunities"
10:30 AM - break
11:00 AM - Breakout group overview - "Neuro-Nano Needs and Opportunities"
12 noon - closing remarks