ReWire

Carlo Carraro is from Italy and recently completed his Master’s degree in Bioengineering at Politecnico di Milano, where he specialized in electronics and wearable device technologies. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD under theguidance of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Vallery Heike (Instituteof Automatic Control, RWTH Aachen University) and Dr. Joachim von Zitzewitz (ONWARD Medical). His research focuses on developing personalized orthosis and sensor/control platforms for movement intention recognition, both with the goal to improve EES-supported (Epidural Electrical Stimulation) locomotion for people with spinal cord injury.

Simay Genişcan is from Turkey, Izmir, and completed her Master’s degree in Neuroscience in Ajou University, South Korea. She is workingin the lab of Prof. Elizabeth Bradbury at King’s College. With a focus in spinal cord repair, she has been utilizing different approaches to regenerate damaged spinal cord, including cell and organoid transplantation, biomaterial injection, and modulation of inhibitory spinal cord ECM environment with therapeutic drugs. Her thesis project is on an in vitro scar model with primary fibroblasts and astrocytes and screened drugs that can modulate fibrosis.

Alessandro Ippoliti was born in Milan and studied at the Politecnico di Milano where he obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering Physics and a Master’s in Biomedical Engineering. His thesis was conducted at the “Institut de Ciències Fotòniques”(ICFO) in Barcellona under Dr. Turgut Durduran. In May, he began in the ReWIRE program at TUHH under the supervision of Prof. Kim Trieu, with a focus on looking to build fully biocompatible and biodegradable spinal implants out of hydrogels through a stereolithographic technique called “two photon polymerization” (2PP). This is done with the scope of promoting spinal cord regeneration after traumatic injuries.

Navami Prabhakar Koyande was born in Mumbai, India and obtained her MSc degree in Biotechnology from University of Mumbai. She will start working as a PhD student at Biosynth, Lelystad under the supervision of Prof. Dr. PeterTimmerman (Biosynth) and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Laura De Laporte (RWTH Aachen University). She will work on developing high-affinity CLIPSTM peptides that mimic functions of cell adhesive proteins, like laminins, to support in vitro and in vivo cell and nerve attachment and migration.

Firman Isma Serdana is a Biomedical Engineer with a passion for neuroengineering on the application of bio-signal processing and machine learning for system control. His research focus is on the utilization of hand and arm electromyography signals for robotics control and rehabilitation. A recent project used high-density EMG to reproduce discrete finger control (Serdana et al., 2022 & 2023) under the supervision of Prof. Dario Farina and Dr. Silvia Muceli. He graduated with a B.Eng. in Biomedical Engineering from Airlangga University and also received an MSc in Human and Biological Robotics at Imperial College London.

Catarina Tavares, from Portugal, obtained her MSc degree in Nanotechnology Engineering at the NOVA Faculty of Science and Technology. She is pursuing a PhD under the supervision of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Laura De Laporte at DWI (RWTH Aachen University), focusing on the microfluidic production of microgel capsules as drug delivery systems and the sustained release of growth factors to promote spinal cord regeneration after injury. Since starting in September, she has been conducting a literature review on sustained or stimuli-triggered drug delivery systems based on microgels and on the effects of local growth factor release for neural regeneration.

Jace Vu graduated with a BSc in Chemical Engineering at Miami University, USA, and an MSc in Bioengineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. He will start his doctoral research in the Advanced Materials for Biomedicine research group led by Dr.-Ing. Laura De Laporte at the DWI Leibniz Institute for Interactive Materials. He will be working on developing and evaluating injectable, magneto-responsive, macroporous guiding scaffolds as therapy after acute SCI.

Scott Erickson is a PhD student working under Prof. Stéphanie Lacour in the Laboratory for Soft Bioelectronic Interfaces (LSBI) at EPFL. In the past he has worked on developing in vitro models of placental and cerebral vasculature. He is now working on designing and fabricating microelectrode arrays for recording electrophysiological activity of human spinal cord organoids with the goal of developing an in vitro model of spinal cord injury.

Tristan Tarasi joined ONWARD as part of the ReWIRE program. Epidural electrical stimulation (EES) is a promising technique used to help restore movement and function in individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI). The main goal of his project was to develop solutions that enhance rehabilitation with EES. His thesis focused on two main areas. The first involves the development of sensors and real-time algorithms for motion intention recognition in combination with personalized EES. The second focused on investigating state-of-the-art orthoses and their potential to improve mobility in conjunction with EES.