Author: ni

Machine Learning for Predicting Brain Deformation in Concussions using Head Motion (DigiBrain)

Description:
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a silent epidemic and is a major cause of death and disability worldwide. Still, the primary biomechanics of common direct impact injuries is unclear. TBIs are mostly characterized using head motion data and are further complemented with sophisticated finite element computer simulations of brain deformation caused by the corresponding head motion.

Physics Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) have shown promising results in computational modelling of partial differential equations and are at early stages of development. The aim of this project is to develop a PINNs-based model to predict brain deformation using the head kinematics, or a Digital Twin of the existing mechanical model used to the predict the brain deformation, using the University College Dublin Brain Trauma Model (UCDBTM).

Related to this Dr Tripathi is recruiting two postdocs on this award. If any of you are interested or know someone who may be further details can be found here: https://www.universityofgalway.ie/tripathilab/opportunities/funded-pdfs/

Funded by:
The EU Commission Recovery and Resilience Facility under the Science Foundation Ireland Future Digital Challenge Grant Number 22/NCF/FD/11007.

#NextGenerationEU

Some of our GNC members had the opportunity to attend the BT Young Scientist 2023 for a day to chat all things neuroscience with the attendees. They came equipped with an interactive model of the human brain, paper brain hats, a presentation on GNC research, the Benham’s disk, and lots of brain erasers and GNC stickers for people to take home. A great day was had by all, and they were very impressed by the standard of all the student projects they saw.

Our fabulous GNC representitives pictured below at the stand (Left-right; Jonathan Costello, Dr Ciara Egan, Prof John Kelly, Katie Healy)

Thank you to everyone who attended and presented at the GNC Research Day 2022. It was a very enjoyable day full of interesting research. We had great talks from our invited speakers Dr Róisín McMackin, Dr. Sandrine Géranton, and Dr. Siobhain O’Mahony, and would like to thank them again for these.

Congratulations as well to the winners of the presentation competitions!

Best Short Oral presentation:

1st Prize winner Tommy Patton

2nd prize winner Rebecca Mahoney

Best Poster presenations:
1st Prize winner Saahithh Redddi Patlola:

Joint 2nd prize winners Sorour Nemati and Andrew Douglas:

3rd prize winners Ieva Vainoraite & Aoife Doherty (joint first authors)!

The GNC would like to thank everyone who attended todays Summer Research Symposium. In particular our 6 speakers (Dr. Tom Burke, Dr. Ciara Egan, Dr. Bharat Tripathi, Dr. Andrea Kwakowsky, Dr. Ronan Fleming, and Dr. Emer McGrath) who gave interesting talks across a broad range of topics in Neuroscience, and Dr. Derek Morris and Dr. Michelle Roche for chairing. It was avery enjoyable and informative day!

Several neuroscientists joined the academic staff in NUI Galway at Lecturer/Assistant Professor level and higher just prior to and during the pandemic. Due to restrictions, there has been few opportunities for these new staff to connect with the neuroscience community in person and present their research.

To address this, we are organizing a Galway Neuroscience Centre (GNC) Summer Research Symposium on Friday 1st July (09:20-13:00) in the Human Biology Building.

Please see the attached file for the full schedule including speakers, talk titles and biogs.

GNC Summer Research Symposium 2022

10/05/2022 Repro free: Dr Emer McGrath Photo:Andrew Downes, xposure.[/caption]

Recent work by GNC member Professor Emer McGrath and collaborators on vascular risk factors for dementia, read more here!

See here for an overview of a new collaboration by GNC member Professor Bob Lahue on neurological diseases.