Seminars and events

Seminars are held each week at the Bionics Institute and are open to the public. Registration is not required.
 
The seminars are held at the Institute, unless stated otherwise:
 

4-5pm each Friday

 
Bionics Institute
Level 1, 384-388 Albert Street
East Melbourne
 
 
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28/06/2013 4:00 PMThushara PereraResearch Engineer, Bionics Institute
21/06/2013 4:00 PMShefin George Bionics Institute PhD student
 
14/06/2013 4:00 PMDr Sam IrvingResearch Fellow, Bionics Institute
 
 
31/05/2013 4:00 PMNiliksha Gunewardene Bionics Institute PhD student
 
24/05/2013 4:00 PMProf Mal HorneProf Mal Horne
Professor Horne is Deputy Director of Florey Neuroscience Institutes, Consultant Neurologist at St Vincent’s Hospital, Fitzroy, and Conjoint Professor, Centre for Neurosciences at the University of Melbourne. He is a member of The Australian Society for Neurosciences, The Australian Association of Neurologists, The Royal Australasian College of Physicians and The American Society for Neurosciences.
 
17/05/2013 4:00 PMLet’s focus now!Dr Jeremy Marozeau, Bionics Institute
Description:
Over the past 6 months, 5 patients have been tested with an experimental cochlear implant able to stimulate all 22 electrodes simultaneously. By applying a specific weight on each electrode, it is possible to narrow the electric current spread. In this seminar, I will present a teaser of the very early preliminary results.
 
Bio:
Dr Jeremy Marozeau is a Research Fellow at the Bionics Institute. His research is focusing on the perception of music and voice pitch information for people with a cochlear implant. He received his doctorate from the University of Paris-VI. His dissertation was on the effect of the fundamental frequency on timbre. He did his PhD as part of the Perception and Musical Cognition team at the Institute for Music/Acoustic Research and Coordination (IRCAM, Paris) and as an invited researcher at the Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT) of U.C. Berkeley. After working at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS, Marseille) on modelling the loudness of impulsive sounds, he continued his research on loudness in hearing-impaired listeners as Research Associate at Northeastern University with Dr Mary Florentine.
10/05/2013 4:00 PMVision processing for safe and efficient navigation with a visual prosthesisDr Chris McCarthy


Description: Current and near-term visual prostheses are severely limited in their capacity to convey visual information about the scene to implantees.   This has motivated consideration of how vision processing algorithms can be designed and used to maximise the bandwidth available, in order to improve functional outcomes for patients. 

In this talk I will present an overview of recent and ongoing work at NICTA CRL towards the development of computer vision algorithms and novel visual representations to enhance the perception of scene structure in prosthetic vision.  In particular, I will outline recent work demonstrating how such algorithms may be used to emphasise low contrast ground obstacles, and encode the time-to-contact of objects posing an imminent threat of collision.    Our obstacle avoidance work has been shown to reduce collisions by close to 50% compared with non-augmented visual representations in mobility trials with simulated prosthetic vision.

Bio: Dr Chris McCarthy is a Senior Researcher with NICTA's Computer Vision Research Group, Canberra and a visiting researcher at BI and the Centre for Neural Engineering, Uni Melb. With a background in biologically-inspired vision algorithms for robot navigation,  he has been involved with BVA since the start, working on computer vision algorithms and visual representations to support safe mobility and orientation with a visual prosthesis.   He re-located to Melbourne in February, in order to work more closely with BVA partners, and contribute to current patient testing.
3/05/2013 4:00 PMFactors affecting inner ear pharmacokineticsElisha King

There is growing interest in treating a variety of inner ear disorders with local drug delivery methodologies due to the lower incidence of side-effects compared to systemic drug delivery. However the associated pharmacokinetics is still not fully understood, leading to uncertainty amongst clinicians about which drug delivery method to use; optimal drug dosage; and application time in order to effectively treat vital structures whilst avoiding harmful overdosing.

The aim of this research was to build on the current knowledge by investigating factors that affect inner ear pharmacokinetics.

In particular, three questions with major clinical significance will be addressed;

  • How do drugs enter the inner ear following intratympanic administration?

  • How are drugs distributed in inner ear fluids?

  • What is the influence of cochleostomy and cochlear implantation on drug distribution in the cochlea?

Experimental data that utilised a variety of markers, measurement techniques, and computational modelling will be presented.
 
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