People

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). He obtained his tenure in 2019 and was promoted to associate professor in 2021. and to full professor in 2026. Yoeri has been a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge (U.K.) in 2017 and Georgia Tech (U.S.) in 2022.

Yoeri was a member of the Eindhoven Young Academy since 2019 and was the chair between 2021 and 2022. In 2019 he was selected as MIT innovator under 35 Europe. In 2023 he won the TU/e Groundbreaking Research Award and in 2025 he was awarded the Ammodo Science Award for Fundamental Research. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Groningen Cognitive Systems and Materials Center at the University of Groningen. Yoeri serves on the Editorial Boards of Neuromorphic Computing and Engineering (IOP), Advanced Electronic Materials (Wiley), Materials Science and Engineering R (Elsevier) and Applied Physics Letters (APS) and is associate editor for the scientific journals Science Advances (AAAS) and Frontiers in Neuroscience: Neuromorphic Engineering.

More information: personal page at TU/e website.

Pei Zhang

Pei Zhang received her Master degree in Polymer Chemistry and Physics from South China Normal University, China, in 2019. Following this, she embarked on a new chapter at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) to pursue her PhD in the Chemical Engineering and Chemistry Department. Under the guidance of Prof. Albert Schenning, she has developed structurally colored liquid crystal polymer materials, which found applications in optical sensors, temperature-responsive reflective coatings, and color-tunable soft actuators. She successfully defended her PhD thesis, titled “Structurally Colored Liquid Crystal Elastomer Actuators”, in August 2023. Subsequently, she joined the Neuromorphic Engineering Group at TU/e. During this exciting journey, she seeks to expand her expertise by integrating “memory” and “learning” capabilities into the responsive polymer materials she has explored, harnessing the potential of organic neuromorphic systems.

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.

After getting inspired by his bachelor end project in the Neuromorphic Engineering group, where he designed a local feedback system for a hardware-based supervised neural network, Bob Huisman continued his master in Mechanical Engineering with a specialization in Microsystems at the Eindhoven University of Technology. For his internship he went to Linköping University to improve his feedback system and to try to locally train a physical weight array. For his graduation project he followed his interest in soft actuators and designed a light-actuated microvalve that could be used to actively control glaucoma drainage. In May 2023, he joined the Neuromorphic Engineering group. In collaboration with AMOLF, his aim is to develop smart and autonomous soft robotic systems with the help of organic neuromorphic devices that can improve their performance and are able to adapt to a changing environment.

Bob Huisman

Niels Burghoorn

Niels Burghoorn did a bachelor in Nanobiology and afterwards graduated in Biomedical Engineering at the Delft University of Technology (TUD), Netherlands, in 2022. During his studies he has always been interested in combining biology and engineering. Therefore, during his master degree he found a way to unite these multidisciplinary interests in the Bioelectronics group. Here he did his master thesis investigating the fundamental mechanisms of ultrasound neuromodulation by fabricating a high-bandwidth biosensing platform. In 2024, he joined the Neuromorphic Engineering Group at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). Here his focus is on the interface between neurology and organic neuromorphics. He will be working on the creation of biohybrid interfaces, paving the way towards neuroprosthetics.

In 2022, Anthony graduated as an engineering scientist from the Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven), specializing in bio-nanotechnology. He wants to pursue a career in high-tech industry, with deep interests in brain computer interfaces (BCI), neuroprosthetics and biocybernetics. To do this, Anthony tries to develop himself as a multidisciplinary engineering scientist, which led him to pursue a self-proposed master thesis topic, where he used cell biology, chemistry and quantum physics to create nano-sized multimodal quantum sensors in cellular systems.
During his studies, he participated in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition as co-team leader, founded the student organization NeuroTech Leuven and with this organization, competed in the international NeuroTechX competition. After his studies, he worked at a high-tech start-up to work on the creation of vocal prosthetics using BCI’s.
Anthony joined the Neuromorphic Engineering group at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in September 2024 as a part of the ERC-funded NeuroLabs project. He will work on the development and integration of biohybrid interfaces in control systems.

Anthony Vorias

Lan Tran

Lan Le Phuong Tran obtained her bachelor in telecommunication at Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), 2022. In the same year, she had ERASMUS MUNDUS scholarship for Master of Science in Radiation and its Effects on MicroElectronics and Photonics Technologies (RADMEP) to pursue further knowledge in designing microelectronic circuits. During this master study, she had chances to expose to different universities, each specializes in different aspects (e.g. University of Jyvaskyla (JYU) for Nuclear Physics and Accelerator Laboratory, Catholic University of Leuven (KU Leuven), the ADVISE group for rad-hard microchip design, University of Montpellier (UM) for the effects of radiation on different materials). During the fourth semester of the master study, she did her thesis at Fraunhofer EMFT, focusing on analog feature extraction for event-driven chip. This was where she found the new branch of research in microelectronic, Neuromorphics. In January 2025, she joined the Neuromorphic Engineering group at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) as a part of the ERC-funded NeuroLabs project. She will do research on the learning mechanism of biological systems to replicate them with micro bio-electronic materials.

I earned my MSc in Cognitive Robotics from TU Delft in 2024, defending a masters thesis demonstrating the ability of a predictive-coding inspired neural network, PredNet, to perform rudimentary structure learning over objects, classes, and class-specific behaviors by way of accurate future video-frame predictions when trained on a custom dataset of video sequences showcasing simple 2D objects and their class-specific behaviors. Now I am a PhD student working jointly under EE/BIASlab, ME/Reshape Lab, and ME/Neuromorphic Engineering groups to enable embodied AI for continuous human-like learning. The minimum expectation is to demonstrate this continuous human-like learning, powered by the neuroscience theory of active inference and implmented in a distributed manner via neuromorphic computing, in a soft-robotics environment exploration and modelling task. More ambitiously, I aim to pave the way towards general, scalable, multisensory, and structurally-grounded modelling and prediction applications.

Alex Ledbetter

Matyáš Matouš

Matyáš Matouš completed his bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU). He subsequently pursued the T.I.M.E. Double Degree programme between CTU and RWTH Aachen University, receiving both the Ing. and M.Sc. degrees. For his master’s thesis, he conducted research at Forschungszentrum Jülich, where his work later resulted in a patent application.

Throughout his academic path, Matyáš has been driven by an interest in bridging biomedical engineering, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. During his studies at RWTH Aachen University, he developed a brain-computer interface based on visually evoked potentials, using a custom-built EEG system that he designed and assembled. This work reflects his broader interest in artificial brains, neurotechnology, and cyborg-inspired systems at the boundary between biology and technology.

He is currently pursuing a joint PhD between Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) and AMOLF. His research focuses on organic active hysterons and spiking neurons for physical computing, with the aim of developing self-learning systems based on neuromorphic principles.