Giacomo Valle on working with patients, animals, and computational models for neurotech

Giacomo Valle is a post-doc researcher at ETH Zurich working in the Neuroengineering Lab to find tools for neurologically disabled amputees and diabetic persons. They look at how to decode from devices and what that would look like for the development of new devices.

***This podcast is sponsored by Ripple Neuro, check out their Neuroscience Research Tools here***

Top 3 Takeaways:

• "We're working on the sensory feedback restoration in people where there is a sensory loss due to neuropathy. The limbs are there there is sensory loss due to the degeneration and neuropathic degeneration. And then with electrical simulation is possible to provide sensation back,"
• The secret to having an H-index of 17 as a Post-Doc is to have a passion for what you do an to work long hours with great people
• Simulations can take a long time to set up and one bad variable can mess up a week's worth of work but gives you flexibility to work anywhere; Animal work means you can't take vacations but you can do more experiments; Patient work is rewarding because you develop bonds with them but sometimes are limited by experiments

0:45 "Do you want to introduce yourself?"

3:30 "How does your work work?"

6:15 "What kind of devices do you use and what kind of bandwidth is involved?"

9:00 Sponsorship by Ripple Neuro

9:30 "You do seem to have a lot about computation and modeling. What role does this play in your research?"

13:00 "How good are the simulation predictions?"

19:30 "5 or 10 years down the line, what would your research lead to?"

22:45 "You have an H index of 17, which is crazy for a post-doc. What's your secret?"

25:45 "You've worked with patients, computational work, and animal work. You have these three perspectives of research, which is the easiest, which is the hardest, what are the advantages and disadvantages of all of those?"

30:30 "What do you think will be some future breakthroughs in this work and what does the future look like?"

33:15 "How much longer before you get implanted?"

34:45 "If you had unlimited funding, what would you spend it on?"

37:30 "Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to mention?"