Bioelectronic Interfaces Powered by Neuromorphic Computing for Characterizing Neuronal Signals
Join us for our upcoming Future Computing Seminar Series
Speaker: Dr. Hasan Uluşan (Middle East Technical University, Turkey)
Date: Thursday, Oct 30th, 2025, 15:00 CET
Where: HG F 26.3
Abstract:
Many neuroscientific questions can be addressed by studying highly interdependent processes, such as the exact timing and occurrence of single-cell action potentials, their propagation speed, and trajectories along axons, the release of neurotransmitters at synapses, tissue properties, and surface adhesion. Measuring these properties simultaneously at sufficient spatial and temporal resolution poses a major challenge. We have developed a multi-functional high-density microelectrode array (HD-MEA) platform that can be used to simultaneously and rapidly perform electrophysiological recordings, impedance imaging, and electrochemical measurements. This platform can be used to culture different types of electrogenic cells in-vitro including primary neurons from rat embryos, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), mouse/primate retinas, brain slices, cardiomyocytes, and organoids. Moreover, the HD-MEA can be combined with 3D electrodes to be used for in-vivo recordings of brain signals of animal models. On the other hand, these MEA systems have high sampling rates, leading to large amounts of irrelevant data and high energy consumption. Therefore, we developed a 4096-channel event-based MEA that digitizes bio-signals at the pixel level by encoding changes as asynchronous digital address-event which significantly reduces the off-chip data transmission.
Speaker bio:
Hasan Uluşan received the B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from METU, Ankara, Turkey in 2011, 2013, and 2018, respectively. Between 2019 and 2023, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Bio Engineering Laboratory, Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering, ETH Zürich, Switzerland. Between 2023-2024 he worked as a Lead Researcher at METUMEMS Center Ankara, Turkey. In 2024, he joined the Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department at METU, where he is currently working as an Assistant Professor.
Dr. Uluşan won the 2019 Ph.D. Thesis of the Year Award from IEEE Turkey Section and received the TÜBİTAK 2232 International Fellowship for Early Stage Researchers. His research interests include integrated circuits and systems design, especially for low-power applications, biosensor interfaces, neuroscience, neurological and cardiological disease modeling, low-power transceiver circuits, power management circuits for energy harvesting systems, and mixed-signal circuits and systems for wearable and implantable medical applications. With 15 years of integrated circuit expertise, Dr. Uluşan joined the design and validation of low-power front-end circuits with low noise amplifiers (LNAs) and filters, variable gain amplifiers, analog-to-digital converters, current-mode circuits etc. In addition to state-of-the-art analog circuit topologies, Dr. Uluşan combined his knowledge with digital design techniques to complete the system-on-chip and maintain the configuration of the blocks and data flow from/to the chip. Furthermore, he is also working on neuromorphic system implementation to reduce the computing on-chip and decrease the power consumption of the systems.