Ajmal Azees commenced his PhD studies in October 2020 at the Bionics Institute in collaboration with RMIT University in Biomedical Engineering.
He completed his Bachelor of Science of Engineering (Hons) with the first-class honors at the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka and worked at the same university for almost two years. He was awarded multiple awards, including the Vice chancellor’s list award, Dean’s award and best student excelling in research and development during his bachelor’s degree. He also developed a medical device, “HemoX”, – A Non-invasive screening tool to detect anemia. He presented outcome of HemoX in more than 12 countries and won several international invention awards.
Ajmal’s PhD project at Bionics Institute is titled, “Developing next generation of neural stimulation devices”. This project will investigate the efficacy of a ‘hybrid’ neural stimulation device that combines light emitting diodes (LEDs) and platinum electrodes to harness the precision of optogenetics stimulation while maintaining the efficiency and speed of electrical stimulation. He believes the spatial resolution of bionics devices such as cochlear implants and retinal implants could be improved significantly while maintaining the temporal resolution achieved by electrical stimulation.
Ajmal was interested in novel medical technologies and was fascinated to help suffering patients with the engineering knowledge he acquired, which led him to develop a biomedical device while he was at his final year at the university. He came across Bionics Institute while exploring the bionic eye project and impressed with the research conducted at the Bionics Institute and his fascination towards working with the new technology led him to join the Optogenetics team.