Author Archives: Cees Jeroen Bes

First dutch blind patient can see again

Today, the dutch newspaper Trouw published an article in which it reports about the first blind dutch patient being able to see again. This is made possible by a retinal implant developed by the company Second Sight, which saw its implant called Argus II being approved by the FDA this spring. As with most types of implants, it is only able to restore the original functioning of the biological senses with a limited resolution, urging a further improvement of the implant. Nonetheless, this is a huge step forward in improving the quality of life of people suffering from a reduced or even complete failure of their biological senses.

Marijn received best presentation award at BME 2013 Conference

The Biomedical group this year attended  the BME 2013 (the 4th Dutch Bio-Medical Engineering Conference 2013) conference, held at 24th and 25th of January 2013. Our group held 5 oral presentations (Senad, Yao, Wannaya, Wu, Marijn) and 2 poster presentations (Rico and me). Marijn was selected as one of the four nominees for the best oral presentation award. Moreover, he was not only nominated, he also won this award! Congratulations, Marijn! 🙂

BELEM

BELEM is an
Erasmus intensive training program labeled by the EU for 2012. BELEM
addresses the field of BioMedical Engineering (BME), with a
specialization in BioElectronics.
BELEM supports
multi-disciplinary research and helps young engineering researchers,
in the early phase of their research project, bridge the gap with
life sciences. BELEM intends to bring them the necessary background
and methods to conduct efficiently multi-disciplinary research
through a deep and broad integration of engineering and biology. [
The above text is coming from the BELEM website
http://www.ims-bordeaux.fr/BELEM
]

BELEM took
place from 25th of March till 6th of April at
the University of Bordeaux, France. The course is especially
interesting for PhD students being at the first year of their
research. It gives an overview of the BME research area and can help
you in gaining a better understanding of your research topic. The
course consists of lectures about the topics in BME, a small research
project, a hospital visit and a bio laboratory visit.

Three
people of TU Delft presented about their research. Wouter gave
lectures about the electrophysiological aspects in recording bio
signals and low-power circuit design, Marijn about electrode-tissue
modelling and Mark about the RF link between an implant and the
outside world.

Besides the
lectures, the course is a very good opportunity to meet fellow PhD
students from other universities working in BME as well. During the
course, you have the opportunity to share knowledge and experiences
with each other.

Cees-Jeroen

Scholarship Accepted

EURO-DOTS

In order to improve my Analog CMOS IC
design skills I decided I would like to follow a course on Analog
CMOS IC design. To do this, however, mostly you need to bring a big
bag of money with you to register for such a course. This is a
problem for me as poor PhD student.

To solve this problem, a few weeks ago
I applied for a scholarship from the EURO-DOTS institute. This
institute gives a limited amount of scholarships to european PhD
students giving them the ability to follow high quality courses which
fulfill the accreditation criteria.

Today I got an email from them in which
they told me that my request is accepted! This means that in August I
will follow a one week course on Advanced Analog CMOS IC Design in
Lausanne, Switzerland organized by MEAD education. The instructors of
this course are: Eric Vittoz, Lanny Lewyn, Willy Sansen, Rinaldo
Castello, Herman Casier and Gabor Temes.

Im looking forward to go there 😀

Cees-Jeroen

Wilson Greatbatch, co-inventor of the pacemaker, has died at the age of 92

Wilson Greatbatch

Tuesday 27th of September, the co-inventor of the pacemaker, Wilson Greatbatch, died at the respectable age of 92 years. With the invention of the pacemaker as first implantable medical device, he created the basis of modern implantable medical devices used today. He is also founder of the Greatbatch company which put a lot of effort into the improvement of battery lifetime for implants. I believe that for many of the modern engineers he has been a great and inspiring person.

Cees-Jeroen

I’m back!

After one year of absence since I graduated for my master thesis, I can happily tell you that I’ m back :). On September 1 I started my PhD research on neural readout circuitry in cochlear implants.

The project is a collaboration between Delft University of Technology and Leiden University Medical Center and is funded by STW (Dutch Technology Foundation). It is called ReaSONS (Realtime Sensing of Neural Signals). Within this project we aim to develop new technology to record the evoked Compound Action Potential (eCAP) generated by the hair cells in the cochlea.

As soon as I have my first results I will let you know. Stay tuned!

Cees-Jeroen