Keynote Lecture
Prof Joseph Culver
Confirmed. Pic and bio coming soon.
Presidential Lecture
Prof David Delpy
Professor Delpy is currently Emeritus Professor of Medical Photonics at University College London (UCL). He studied physics at Brunel University then spent two years in industry, before going to UCL where he stayed for 35 years. His research focused on the development of sensors for monitoring infants and adults in intensive care with a particular emphasis on the measurement of tissue oxygenation and metabolism. He helped develop a range of sensors and instruments many of which were commercialised either through collaborations with medical industries or through the company “Physiological Instrumentation” that he and colleagues set up (subsequently acquired by Novametrix Medical Systems Inc). He is best known for developments of NIR Spectroscopy and Imaging of brain oxygenation including the early “time of flight” measurements of optical pathlength in tissue with many of these developments being marketed in collaboration with Hamamatusu Photonics.At UCL, he was Head of the Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering for seven years and then the UCL Research Vice Provost for a further seven. He left UCL in 2007 to become CEO of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), stepping down in 2014. He was subsequently Chair of the UK Ministry of Defence Scientific Advisory Council (2014-2017) and Chair of the National Quantum Technologies Programme Strategic Advisory Board (2014-2019). He is currently a member of the UK Home Office Science Advisory Council, Brunel University Council, Institute of Physics (IoP) Honorary Treasurer and Chair of IoP Publishing Board. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, Royal Academy of Engineering and Academy of Medical Sciences.
Invited Lectures
Dr Xiaojun Cheng
Dr. Xiaojun Cheng is a Research Assistant Professor in the department of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University. Dr. Cheng has a Ph.D. background in Physics conducting fundamental studies of wave scattering inside ordered and disordered media at the City University of New York. She has then worked as a postdoc at Boston University with Dr. David Boas on modeling and system designs for various optical imaging techniques. She has worked on optical microscopy for mouse brain imaging using multi-photon microscopy, optical coherence tomography (OCT) and laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI). She has also worked on measuring human brain hemodynamics using techniques including functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS), and has developed the novel fiber-based speckle contrast optical spectroscopy (SCOS) system and the data processing pipeline for human cerebral blood flow measurements. Dr. Cheng’s main focus is to exploit the speckle pattern arising from the interference of coherent scattered light to probe brain structure and function in health and disease.
Prof Judit Gervain
Judit Gervain is a Full Professor of Developmental Psychology, University of Padua, Italy and a Senior Research Scientist, CNRS, France. Her research focuses early speech perception and language acquisition in typically and atypically developing infants. Her work is published in leading journals, such as Science Advances, Nature Communications, PNAS, Current Biology. She is an associate editor at Developmental Science, Cognition and Neurophotonics. Her work is currently funded by an ERC Consolidator Grant.
Prof Antonia Hamilton
Dr Hamilton is a Professor in Social Neuroscience and leader of the Social Neuroscience group at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (UCL). She completed a PhD in computational motor control and postdoctoral work on imitation in autism and brain systems for action understanding. Her research now uses fNIRS to examine brain mechanisms of human social interaction, with a focus on advancing methods and developing theories that can help us understand how interaction works. By using fNIRS hyperscanning in conjunction with detailed behavioural analysis and strong cognitive theories, her work can reveal how and why people imitate each other, how social skills differ in autism, and the neural mechanisms of face to face social interaction. She was awarded the Experimental Psychology Society prize lectureship for 2013 and a Lundbeck Visiting Professorship at the University of Copenhagen in 2021. She is currently Editor in Chief of the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.
Prof David Highton
Confirmed. Pic and bio coming soon.
Dr Bettina Sorger
Dr. Bettina Sorger is an associate professor at the Cognitive Neuroscience Department at the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience at Maastricht University (The Netherlands). She has worked in several fields of fundamental and clinical neuroscience with a focus on developing methods for brain-based interaction and neurofeedback learning exploiting hemodynamic brain signals. Currently, her particular research objective is the transfer of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) methodology and results to mobile functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to increase usability of hemodynamic brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) and provide patients instantly and permanently with useful BCI systems that are applicable in everyday-life.
