Principle Investigator

Yoeri van de Burgt

Yoeri van de Burgt obtained his PhD degree at Eindhoven University of Technology in 2014. He then briefly worked at a high-tech startup in Switzerland, after which he obtained a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University (USA) with prof. Alberto Salleo. 

Since November 2016 he has returned to Eindhoven University of Technology where he is leading the Neuromorphic Engineering group within the Mechanical Engineering department, and as part of the Institute for Complex Molecular Systems (ICMS) and the newly established Eindhoven A.I. Systems Institute (EAISI). He obtained his tenure in 2019 and was promoted to associate professor in 2021. Yoeri has been a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge (U.K.) in 2017.

Yoeri is a member of the Eindhoven Young Academy since 2019 and the chair since 2021. In 2019 he was selected as MIT innovator under 35 Europe. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Groningen Cognitive Systems and Materials Center at the University of Groningen and since 2021 he is the Focus Area co-chair for neuromorphic computing at the Henrik Casimir Institute of TU/e. Yoeri serves on the Editorial Board of IOP Neuromorphic Computing and Engineering and is an associate editor for Frontiers in Neuroscience: Neuromorphic Engineering.

More information: personal page at TU/e website.

Postdocs

Simone Spolaor

Simone Spolaor received his Master Degree in Molecular Biotechnology and Bioinformatics from the University of Milan, Italy, in 2016. Subsequently, he pursued a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy. During his Ph.D., he developed computational techniques to simulate and analyze complex biochemical systems, with a particular focus on methods based on fuzzy logic. He defended his Ph.D. thesis, titled “Fuzzy logic for the modeling and simulation of complex systems”, in 2020, after which he continued his research on bio-inspired algorithms as a postdoc at the University of Milano-Bicocca. In 2022, he joined the Neuromorphic Engineering Group at Eindhoven University of Technology. His scientific interests include Systems and Synthetic Biology, complex systems simulation, bio-inspired algorithms and intelligent matter.

PhD Students

Setareh Kazemzadeh

Setareh got her Masters in solid state physics on the topic of Biophotovoltaic solar cells with Photosystem complex protein as active layer. That experience opened a door to a new world for her and helped to learn a lot about other fields and gave her confidence to go for more challenging and multidisciplinary projects. She joined the neuromorphic engineering group in September 2018. More specifically, Setareh works on developing neuromorphic crossbar arrays with health-care applications such as smart biosensors. She enjoys working in an international environment at the TU/e, which helps to improve not only professional skills but also social ones and become more familiar to a wide variety of different cultures from around the world.

After completing her Bachelor in Applied Physics on the topic of magnetization reversal in cobalt wires she continued her physics Master interested in various topics. In particular drawn to the medical applications of physics she did a research internship at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, where she studied the cell uptake of ligand functionalized gold nanospheres using high-order image correlation spectroscopy. For her graduation project she went to the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, USA, to investigate the morphology and the effect of plasma on the gas flow in cold atmospheric pressure plasma jets impinging on a substrate. She got excited by the combination of research and the application of technology for medical purposes and joined the neuromorphic engineering group in January 2019. Her goal is to create a microfluidic chip with integrated sensors able to detect and classify biological cells using machine-learning. She enjoys working in this multidisciplinary environment eager to develop herself both scientifically as personally.

Eveline van Doremaele

Imke Krauhausen

Imke Krauhausen graduated with a Masters degree in electrical engineering from RWTH Aachen University (Germany). Her master thesis focused on unsupervised deep learning algorithms for the segmentation of tumors in brain MRI data. During her BSc she specialized in micro and nano electronics. Continuing this path she focused her semester abroad at Linköping University (Sweden) on learning about the physics behind nano electronics. Fusing her interests in micro-/nanoelectronics and neural networks she started her PhD as a joined project between the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer research in Mainz and TU Eindhoven (NL) in November 2019. As part of the neuromorphic engineering group at TU/e she works on neuromorphic organic arrays for brain-inspired smart robotics and sensors.

Charles-Théophile Coen obtained his master degree at Swiss Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) in microsystem with a specialization in micro- and nanosystem. His interest in neural implants and neuroengineering started early on during his Erasmus exchange at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (KTH) and grew during his master degree where he mainly worked on flexible electronics for neural interface. For his master’s thesis at Stanford University, he worked on stretchable and photopatternable conducting polymer for high density electrophysiology and took charge of the design and fabrication of a device capable of recording surface EMG.
After his master degree, he worked at the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM) in the Life microtechnologies department and focused on the automation of skin graft production.
In May 2021, Charles-Théophile joined the Neuromorphic Engineering group at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). His main goal is to create artifical synapses that can detect neurotransmitters released by neurons and modulate their conductance accordingly.

Charles Coen

Benn Proper

Benn Proper obtained his Masters degree in mechanical engineering at the Eindhoven University of Technology with a specialization in dynamics and control. In collaboration with the Technical University of Munich (TUM), his master thesis focused on the development of a classification method for classifying the expectancy of measured simultaneous impact behavior using a computationally feasible prediction. Afterwards, he spent his internship abroad at TUM to validate the findings presented in his master thesis on an experimental setup. In May 2022, Benn started his PhD on a joint project between the Dynamics and Control soft robotics and Neuromorphic Engineering group. This project concerns the development of a hand-gripper system that can be locally optimized to form an optimized closed-loop connection between biological signals and artificial actuation using haptic feedback and neuromorphic control.

Alumni

2022 Gianmaria Matrone (postdoc at Northwestern University)
2022 Yanxi Zhang (professor at Xiamen University)

Masters and Exchange Students

2023

Dirkje van Gastel

2023

Roy Schepers

2022

Ibrahim Kurt

2021

Gijs van Muijden

2021

Tim Stevens

2020

Pranchu Shubham

2020

Joris Dijcks

2019

Ashuya Takemoto (visiting scholar Osaka University, Japan)

2019

Sjors Dankers

2019

Joey Hendriks

2018

Tom van der Pol (Department of Chemistry)

2018

Scott Keene (visiting scholar Stanford University, USA)