Hello everyone,

Let me tell you about my experiences with INSET.  The first day was rather intimidating, well the first few days for that matter.  There was so much going on, including, meeting a lot of new people, going through safety training, researching my project, and just trying to grasp what I will be doing for the next eight weeks.  Honestly, my goal was to just to not break anything expensive for a couple of days and soak in as much information as possible.  I do not want you to get the impression that the first few days was bad, in fact it was quite the opposite.  Just a lot going on around me.  Yet trust me, you  learn and adapt very quickly.  It is fantastic being around people who are so passionate about what they are doing.  It really rubs off on you.  The environment around me was very positive and helpful.  My mentor was very patient with me and answered my many questions.  Now that this internship is really rolling, I really love the creativity and freedom allowed in research.   Spending time with these graduate students has really been a great source of information on how graduate school works and is helping me find my own path.   “transition to research.” 🙂  My project is very complex because it combines so many different aspects of science.   I am helping my mentor design a high density neural implant.  Which means I am making a very small spiky chip (picture down below) that can be inserted in the brain and acts like an antenna to pick up brain signals.  These brain signals can vary but the ones that we are focused on are the pulses in the motor cortex.  The plan is to pick up on thoughts and use that information to control something in the environment.  This technology is already out there like with braingate which is the video I posted with this entry, we are simply improving the design with our own modifications.  These modifications include making the device wireless and more biologically friendly.  Below are some illustrations that hopefully with make more sense.  My advice so far is to ask as many questions as possible and to know that it is perfectly fine to not know something, in fact it is expected.  Well this is my first blog post ever, so thank you for reading this.

P.S. I would like to say thank you to all the people who make this program happen.  This includes mentors, faculty advisers, and the folks in-charge of the INSET program such as Jens, Maria, and Dr. Arnold.   Thank you so much for all of the hard work, email responses, and just time and effort that you guys and girls put into this program.  It is extremely generous.

Here is the link for the Braingate project demonstration.  (It might make things more clear)

High Density Neural Implant ( This is what I make in the lab)   Below this picture is how my design fits into the larger scale project.

Photos from: http://mimetic.ece.ucsb.edu/research/