Alan Lai

Dr Alan Lai received his BEng (Electrical) and MEngSc (Biomedical) degrees from Monash University, Clayton, Australia. He received his PhD degree (Sports Engineering) from Swinburne University of Technology in 2011.

Alan worked as a research assistant from 2007 to 2009 at the Bionics Institute in the epilepsy seizure control project. He implemented a seizure detection algorithm and contributed to the development of the seizure abatement experiment setup in humans. Along with other members of the team, he conducted the pre-clinical pilot studies of on-demand therapeutic stimulation for seizure abatement in humans, and electrical probing of cortical excitability in patients with epilepsy.

He is currently working on a NHMRC Development Grant project to miniaturise the trolley-sized seizure abatement experimental setup to a tablet computer-based ambulatory system.

Research fields of interest

• Epilepsy seizure detection and anticipation
• Epilepsy seizure abatement using electrical stimulation
  

Research projects

• Development of an ambulatory epilepsy treatment device
• Investigation of the effectiveness of a novel therapeutic electrical stimulation paradigm for seizure abatement in humans
  

Publications

1. Freestone, D.R., Kuhlmann, L., Grayden, D.B., Burkitt, A.N., Lai, L., Nelson, T.S., Vogrin, S., Murphy, M., D’Souza, W., Badawy, R., Nesic, D., & Cook, M.J. (2011) Electrical probing of cortical excitability in patients with epilepsy. Epilepsy & Behavior, 22, S110-S118.
   
2. Nelson, T.S., Suhr, C.L., Lai, A., Halliday, A.J., Freestone, D.R., McLean, K.J., Burkitt, A.N., & Cook, M.J. (2011) Exploring the tolerability of spatiotemporally complex electrical stimulation paradigms. Epilepsy Research, 96 (3), 267-75.
   
3. Nelson, T.S., Suhr, C.L., Freestone, D.R., Lai, A., Halliday, A.J., McLean, K.J., Burkitt, A.N., & Cook, M.J. (2011) Closed loop seizure control with very high frequency electrical stimulation at seizure onset in the GAERS model of absence epilepsy. International Journal of Neural Systems, 21(2), 163-173.
   
4. Kuhlmann, L., Freestone, D., Lai, A., Burkitt, A.N., Fuller, K., Grayden, D.B., Seiderer, L., Vogrin, S., Mareels, I.M.Y., & Cook, M.J. (2010) Patient-specific bivariate-synchrony-based seizure prediction for short prediction horizons. Epilepsy Research, 91 (2-3), 214-231.
   
5. Nelson, T.S., Suhr, C.L., Lai, A., Halliday, A.J., Freestone, D.R., McLean, K.J., Burkitt, A.N., & Cook, M.J. (2010) Seizure severity and duration in the cortical stimulation model of experimental epilepsy in rats: a longitudinal study. Epilepsy Research, 89 (2-3), 261-70.
   
6. Freestone, D.R., Burkitt, A.N., Lai, A., Nelson, T.S., Grayden, D.B., Vogrin, S., Murphy, M., D’Souza, W., Badawy, R., Kuhlmann, L., & Cook, M.J. (2011) Probing for cortical excitability. Proceedings of the 33rd IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference, p 1644-1647.
   
7. Freestone, D.R., Grayden, D.B., Lai, A., Nelson T.S., Halliday, A., Burkitt, A.N., & Cook, M.J. (2009) The thalamocortical circuit and the generation of epileptic spikes in rat models of focal epilepsy. 31st Annual International IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc Conference, Minneapolis, U.S.A., p. 1533-1536.