Prof. Patrick Degenaar
@patrickdegenaar.bsky.social
I am a professor of neuroprosthetics at Newcastle University. I specialise in making implantable brain devices to restore sight to the blind
Apparently a Chinese team took shortcuts on AAV viri for gene editing to cure disease - with tragic results. Apparently injecting too much AAV in the blood will result in accumulation in the bladder, causing an immune reaction. Safety testing is there for a reason! youtube.com/shorts/Xay4z...
Exclusive: Death of girl in Chinese gene-editing trial was never made public
YouTube video by Science Magazine
youtube.com
This is a fun video literature review: If current AI keeps growing at current rates without improvements in computational efficiency, then fossil fuels will be depleted in a decade, and the sea will boil in 67 years www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSjd.... We need renewables AND better compute!
Why Advanced Aliens Probably Don’t Build Dyson Spheres
YouTube video by Anton Petrov
youtube.com
Great to see progress on wheelchair control with Neuralik. It is very invasive - implant in the brain, and expensive. But the patient indicates that it seems to provide real benefit. www.youtube.com/shorts/V06QX...
Controlling A Wheelchair With Your Mind
YouTube video by Neuralink
youtube.com
Merging science into innovate UK then merging it into a bigger dept that also does business is NOT a correct direction. Science absolutely needs to connect to development. But we need strong blue sky research that can lead to the really big breakthroughs. And 0.7% GDP doesn't cut it!
This is quite impressive: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtgg... All robots are the same, and control is only part autonomous. But individual moves (e.g. flying kicks) styled from KungFu movies combine control theory, advanced AI, and user skill on the gamepad. The objective is to develop the software.
Best Moments | Highlights from the EngineAI URKL Unveiling Night
YouTube video by Engineai Robot
youtube.com
It has now been announced that the North East Universities are coming together to jointly create the Great Northeast NanoFab facility - co-funded by the UKRI and also supported by local industry: www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articl.... Many congrats to my other investigators: Toby Hallam and Johannes Gausden
Great Northeast Nanofab to strengthen the region’s economy
A new regional facility to support advanced microfabrication activities across the region’s universities and high-tech industries is being established by Newcastle University.
ncl.ac.uk
Despite assurances, it turns out that Palantir has full backdoor access to individual patient data prior to anonymisation! Let's put pressure on the government to trigger the break clause: actionnetwork.org/petitions/94...
Health Secretary James Murray: Trigger the break clause and get Palantir out of the NHS
https://www.foxglove.org.uk/campaigns/wes-streeting-trigger-the-break-clause-and-get-palantir-out-of-the-nhs/
actionnetwork.org
nopalantir.org.uk A few years back, someone in the UK government thought it would be a good idea to hand over our hospital data to a company that specialises in providing the US government with information on targets for assassination.
No Palantir in our NHS
Add your name now to call for US data company Palantir to be dropped from the NHS – and for the future of health data to keep faith with patient trust.
nopalantir.org.uk
The scariest moment in a microelectronics PhD is when the Chip comes back from the fab. 2 years of design then the moment of truth! Some people are so scared, they wait months before testing.. But my PhD student Emad got stuck in and his visual prosthesis chip works! 😁 @nclengineering.bsky.social
www.newcastle-hospitals.nhs.uk/news/newcast... Great to see this new Centre for Neurotechnology coming together here in Newcastle. It is an excellent initiative for the North East and builds on Newcastle University's rich history in the field @nclengineering.bsky.social #neuroprosthetics #bionics
Newcastle experts establish the UK's new National Centre for Neurotechnology and Neurorestoration - Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
The National Centre for Neurotechnology and Neurorestoration is hosted by Newcastle Hospitals and, in collaboration with Newcastle University, supports research and delivery of the latest neurotechnol...
newcastle-hospitals.nhs.uk
@newcastleuni.bsky.social turned on its #christmas tree today. It always goes exponentially crazy just before Christmas, but with the lights on, the Christmas break is starting to get real 😀 @nclengineering.bsky.social
Funded #PhD opportunity for UK home students to do exciting research into #VisualProsthetics to restore sight tot he blind. Students should be 1st class in Engineering/Physics. www.findaphd.com/phds/project... #VisionRestoration, #Neuroprosthetics, #NeuralEngineering, #Bioelectronics
It was wonderful to give a talk today on Engineering the Brain at the Banerjee lab Christmas Symposium in Oxford University. @nclengineering.bsky.social
Really proud that our (heavily delayed by COVID) groundbreaking method to improve the lifetime of optoelectronic implants by 100-fold has been published in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering. eprints.ncl.ac.uk/308760 ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/112... @nclengineering.bsky.social
It is wonderful to see gene therapy in action. In this case, a boy's stem cells were modified to carry a missing gene, enabling them to produce an essential enzyme. It is further evidence for exciting frontier treatments such as optogenetic neural prostheses. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Hunter syndrome: Boy with rare condition amazes doctors after world-first gene therapy
Oliver has an inherited condition called Hunter syndrome, which causes progressive damage to the body and brain.
bbc.co.uk
It is great to see Our latest paper from PhD Student Cong Ma on "FEM Optimization of 3D Abiotic Glucose Fuel Cells for Implantable Medical Devices" hit the front cover of the Prosthesis Magazine 😀 www.mdpi.com/journal/pros... @nclengineering.bsky.social
The Jesmond Dene in Newcastle is lovely at any time of year. But this year, the Autumn leaf fall has been particularly beautiful. Well worth a visit if you are a transient visitor or student in Newcastle city.
Super excited to finally get my DGX Spark AI workstationb(Yay 😁)..... only to realise all tge ports are usbc-c and my keyboards are not... Doh.. will have to wait another day or two to play with it..
www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articl... Wonderful to be part of this fun project! Body powered implants!! 😀
New project to transform implantable medical devices
New £2.1 million GLUTRONICS project aims to revolutionise implantable medical devices with a transformative technology that harnesses power from glucose in the body.
ncl.ac.uk
A PhD opportunity in Trustworthy AI systems for Pervasive Healthcare! Application deadline 14th November www.ncl.ac.uk/postgraduate...
Search for Postgraduate Scholarships and Other Funding
Search scholarships and funding for postgraduate study at Newcastle University. Find financial support tailored to your course and eligibility.
ncl.ac.uk
Well done to my PhD student Cong Ma who has published his first paper on "Optimising the Design of Implantable Fuel Cells" www.preprints.org/manuscript/2..., which is part of an EPSRC funded Glutronics project.
It was great to host a fact-finding delegation from South East University, China this week. I was proud to be able to show the standard of our teaching and research here at Newcastle. SEU is a great place. Looking forward to the reciprocal visit.
It's great to have a visiting fact-finding delegation from EEE at South-East University China. Proud to show how we do things here at Newcastle.
youtube.com/watch?v=gS4r... Great to see progress on robot hands - it's the final piece in the research puzzle before we all get robot butler.
What's in a humanoid hand? | Boston Dynamics
YouTube video by Boston Dynamics
youtube.com
Newcastle is a wonderfully friendly and welcoming city. So today I was especially delighted to see thousands of ordinary Geordies show up to prevent a few hundred far-right hooligans from giving the city a bad name.
I reviewed this fascinating piece of work today at TU Delft. Dutch PhD vivas are somewhat different in format to here in the UK. But in the end it is the quality of the candidate that matters. And happy to say he passed my thorough grilling. 😁
It was wonderful to give my lecture on "Responsible Use of AI for Engineers" to our new MSc cohort today. A great bunch! and we had fun going through the tools together!
