lab

Neurocomputing

Lab Head: Christos-Strydis

Lab Description

The NeuroComputing Lab (NCL) is a multi-disciplinary laboratory located in the Neuroscience Department of the Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, with a triple mission: To build stronger theoretical understanding of the human-brain workings, to develop cutting-edge computational methods for brain exploration and to deliver novel engineering solutions inspired by our ever-growing expertise in the neuroscience field.

The NCL is coordinated by dr. ir. Christos Strydis and dr. Mario Negrello and is established as the rare superset of diverse expertises from the fields of computer engineering, (computational) neuroscience and neurocomputing. Its activities cover a broad spectrum of topics including experimental and theoretical brain exploration, biophysical simulations of brain tissue, neuroscience of motor control, advanced technological solutions for accelerating brain modeling and simulation as well as novel approaches related to implantable medical devices (IMDs) with a strong focus on future implantable neuromodulators.

The NCL is also a founding lab of the cutting-edge, interdisciplinary Centre for Ultrasound and Brain Imaging at Erasmus MC (CUBE) featuring a new type of echography (functional Ultra-Sound, fUS) to visualize blood flow inside the brain. With its unique temporal and spatial properties, fUS will help neuroscientists better understand how different brain areas work together and neurosurgeons drastically improve their operational theater, for instance, via live tumor separation from healthy tissue during surgery.

We work closely with the department’s valorization company Neurasmus B.V. as well as the Erasmus MC Neurosurgery Department. We also maintain strong collaboration ties with a number of external partners including the Delft University of Technology (Netherlands), the National Technical University of Athens (Greece), the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, the BrainInnovations joint venture, the Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden), the Okinawa Institute for Science and Technology (Japan), the Italian Institute for Advanced Studies and the University of Pavia (Italy). Prominent industrial partners and supporters include: Dell Technologies (USA), Nvidia Corp. (USA), Xilinx Inc. (USA), Graphcore (UK) and Maxeler Technologies Inc. (UK).


The NeuroComputing Lab has a dedicated website. For more details, activities, openings and latest news, visit  us at https://neurocomputinglab.com.

Selected Publications

Functional Ultrasound (fUS) During Awake Brain Surgery: The Clinical Potential of Intra-Operative Functional and Vascular Brain Mapping

Soloukey Sadaf, Vincent Arnaud J. P. E., Satoer Djaina D., Mastik Frits, Smits Marion, Dirven Clemens M. F., Strydis Christos, Bosch Johannes G., van der Steen Antonius F. W., De Zeeuw Chris I., Koekkoek Sebastiaan K. E., Kruizinga Pieter
in Frontiers in Neuroscience 2020
DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2019.01384

Quasiperiodic rhythms of the inferior olive.

Negrello M, Warnaar P, Romano V, Owens CB, Lindeman S, Iavarone E, Spanke JK, Bosman LWJ, De Zeeuw CI
in PLoS computational biology 2019
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006475

Exploring Complex Brain-Simulation Workloads on Multi-GPU Deployments

Michiel A. van der Vlag , Georgios Smaragdos , Zaid Al-Ars , Christos Strydis
in ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization (TACO) 2019
DOI: 10.1145/3371235

Attacks on Heartbeat-Based Security Using Remote Photoplethysmography.

Robert Mark Seepers, Wenjin Wang, Gerard de Haan, Ioannis Sourdis, Christos Strydis
in IEEE J. Biomedical and Health Informatics 2018
DOI: 10.1109/JBHI.2017.2691282

BrainFrame: a node-level heterogeneous accelerator platform for neuron simulations.

Smaragdos G, Chatzikonstantis G, Kukreja R, Sidiropoulos H, Rodopoulos D, Sourdis I, Al-Ars Z, Kachris C, Soudris D, De Zeeuw CI, Strydis C
in Journal of neural engineering 2017
DOI: 10.1088/1741-2552/aa7fc5

Lab Members

Christos Strydis
Dr. Ir. Christos Strydis (C)
Associate Professor
Lab Head
Mario Negrello
Dr. Mario Negrello
Assistant Professor
Muhammad Ali Siddiqi
Muhammad Ali Siddiqi
Postdoctoral Fellow
Harry Sidiropoulos
Dr. Harry Sidiropoulos
Postdoctoral Fellow
Elias Fernandez Santoro
Elias Fernandez Santoro
Phd Student
JanHarm Betting
JanHarm Betting
Phd Student
Sotirios Panagiotou
Sotirios Panagiotou
Phd Student
Georgios Smaragdos
Ir. Georgios Smaragdos
Phd Student
Jan de Jong
Jan de Jong
Master Student
Radhika Joshi
Radhika Joshi
Master Student
Apostolos Gerakaris
Apostolos Gerakaris
Bachelor Student
Rene Miedema
Ir Rene Miedema
Scientific Researcher
Konstantinos Lazaridis
Konstantinos Lazaridis
Bachelor Student
Petros Arvanitis
Ir Petros Arvanitis
Research Technician

Selected Publications

Functional Ultrasound (fUS) During Awake Brain Surgery: The Clinical Potential of Intra-Operative Functional and Vascular Brain Mapping

Soloukey Sadaf, Vincent Arnaud J. P. E., Satoer Djaina D., Mastik Frits, Smits Marion, Dirven Clemens M. F., Strydis Christos, Bosch Johannes G., van der Steen Antonius F. W., De Zeeuw Chris I., Koekkoek Sebastiaan K. E., Kruizinga Pieter
in Frontiers in Neuroscience 2020
DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2019.01384

Quasiperiodic rhythms of the inferior olive.

Negrello M, Warnaar P, Romano V, Owens CB, Lindeman S, Iavarone E, Spanke JK, Bosman LWJ, De Zeeuw CI
in PLoS computational biology 2019
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006475

Exploring Complex Brain-Simulation Workloads on Multi-GPU Deployments

Michiel A. van der Vlag , Georgios Smaragdos , Zaid Al-Ars , Christos Strydis
in ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization (TACO) 2019
DOI: 10.1145/3371235

Attacks on Heartbeat-Based Security Using Remote Photoplethysmography.

Robert Mark Seepers, Wenjin Wang, Gerard de Haan, Ioannis Sourdis, Christos Strydis
in IEEE J. Biomedical and Health Informatics 2018
DOI: 10.1109/JBHI.2017.2691282

BrainFrame: a node-level heterogeneous accelerator platform for neuron simulations.

Smaragdos G, Chatzikonstantis G, Kukreja R, Sidiropoulos H, Rodopoulos D, Sourdis I, Al-Ars Z, Kachris C, Soudris D, De Zeeuw CI, Strydis C
in Journal of neural engineering 2017
DOI: 10.1088/1741-2552/aa7fc5

Recent Publications

Zero-Power Defense Done Right - Shielding IMDs from Battery-Depletion Attacks.

Muhammad Ali Siddiqi, Wouter A. Serdijn, Christos Strydis
in J. Signal Process. Syst. 2021
DOI: 10.1007/S11265-020-01530-5

Adding Security to Implantable Medical Devices - Can We Afford It?

Muhammad Ali Siddiqi, Angeliki-Agathi Tsintzira, Georgios Digkas, Miltiadis G. Siavvas, Christos Strydis
in 2021
DOI: 10.5555/3451271.3451278

Securing Implantable Medical Devices Using Ultrasound Waves.

Muhammad Ali Siddiqi, Robert H. S. H. Beurskens, Pieter Kruizinga, Chris I. De Zeeuw, Christos Strydis
in IEEE Access 2021
DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3083576

PlasticNet+ - Extending Multi-FPGA Interconnect Architecture via Gigabit Transceivers.

Carlos Salazar-García, Ronny García-Ramírez, Renato Rimolo-Donadio, Christos Strydis, Alfonso Chacón-Rodríguez
in 2021
DOI: 10.1109/ISCAS51556.2021.9401058

WhiskEras 2.0 - Fast and Accurate Whisker Tracking in Rodents.

Petros Arvanitis, Jan-Harm L. F. Betting, Laurens W. J. Bosman, Zaid Al-Ars, Christos Strydis
in 2021
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-04580-6_14

Secure Opportunistic Contextual Logging for Wearable Healthcare Sensing Devices.

Muhammad Siddiqi, Syed Taha Ali, Vijay Sivaraman
in IEEE Trans. Dependable Secur. Comput. 2021
DOI: 10.1109/TDSC.2019.2927674

Cerebellar Purkinje cells can differentially modulate coherence between sensory and motor cortex depending on region and behavior.

Lindeman S, Hong S, Kros L, Mejias JF, Romano V, Oostenveld R, Negrello M, Bosman LWJ, De Zeeuw CI
in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2021
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2015292118

Functional Ultrasound (fUS) During Awake Brain Surgery: The Clinical Potential of Intra-Operative Functional and Vascular Brain Mapping

Soloukey Sadaf, Vincent Arnaud J. P. E., Satoer Djaina D., Mastik Frits, Smits Marion, Dirven Clemens M. F., Strydis Christos, Bosch Johannes G., van der Steen Antonius F. W., De Zeeuw Chris I., Koekkoek Sebastiaan K. E., Kruizinga Pieter
in Frontiers in Neuroscience 2020
DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2019.01384

Synthesis-Free, Flexible and Fast Hardware Library for Biophysically Plausible Neurosimulations - POSTER

Rene Miedema, Georgios Smaragdos, Mario Negrello, Zaid Al-Ars, Matthias Möller, and Christos Strydis
in FPGA '20: The 2020 ACM/SIGDA International Symposium on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays 2020
DOI: 10.1145/3373087.3375374

flexHH: A Flexible Hardware Library for Hodgkin-Huxley-Based Neural Simulations

Miedema R, Smaragdos G, Negrello M, Al-Ars Z, Möller M, Strydis C
in IEEE Access 2020
DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3007019

Functional Convergence of Autonomic and Sensorimotor Processing in the Lateral Cerebellum.

Romano V, Reddington AL, Cazzanelli S, Mazza R, Ma Y, Strydis C, Negrello M, Bosman LWJ, De Zeeuw CI
in Cell reports 2020
DOI: 10.1016/j.celrep.2020.107867

Stairway to Abstraction - an Iterative Algorithm for Whisker Detection in Video Frames.

Jan-Harm L. F. Betting, Vincenzo Romano, Laurens W. J. Bosman, Zaid Al-Ars, Chris I. De Zeeuw, Christos Strydis
in 2020 IEEE 11th Latin American Symposium on Circuits Systems (LASCAS) 2020
DOI: 10.1109/LASCAS45839.2020.9068992

IMDfence - Architecting a Secure Protocol for Implantable Medical Devices.

Muhammad Ali Siddiqi, Christian Doerr, Christos Strydis
in IEEE Access 2020
DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3015686

NIMG-19. USING FUNCTIONAL ULTRASOUND (FUS) TO MAP BRAIN FUNCTIONALITY AND TUMOR VASCULATURE WITH MICROMETER-MILLISECOND PRECISION

Sadaf Soloukey, Arnaud J P E Vincent, Djaina D Satoer, Frits Mastik, Marion Smits, Clemens M F Dirven, Christos Strydis, Antonius F W van der Steen, Johannes G Bosch, Chris I De Zeeuw, Sebastiaan K E Koekkoek, Pieter Kruizinga
in Neuro-Oncology 2020
DOI: 10.1093/neuonc/noaa215.632

WhiskEras: A New Algorithm for Accurate Whisker Tracking.

Betting JLF, Romano V, Al-Ars Z, Bosman LWJ, Strydis C, De Zeeuw CI
in Frontiers in cellular neuroscience 2020
DOI: 10.3389/fncel.2020.588445
show more publications

Alumni

# Name Job Description Current Position
1 Muhammad Ali Siddiqi PhD student PostDoc - TU Delft
2 Petros Arvanitis MSc student Research Technician - NTUA Greece
3 Paul Bakker MSc student -
4 Georg Hahn MSc student -
5 Athanasios Karapatis MSc student Embedded Engineer - Hiber
6 Corniël Joosse MSc student Embedded Systems Engineer - Abel Sensors
7 Ma Yang MSc student Xiaomi - China
8 Mado Ntekouli MSc student PhD candidate
9 Robert Seepers PhD student Security architect - TNO
10 Vasileios Skrekas MSc student Hardware Engineer - Tiler
11 Michiel van der Vlag MSc student Research scientist - Forschungszentrum Jülich
12 David Veselka MSc student -
13 Georgios Chatzikonstantis PhD student SpaceHellas

Vacancies

(MSc thesis topic) Implementation of Artificial Cerebellum on Cloud multi-FPGA setup [Theme: BrainFrame]

NeuroComputing Lab · Netherlands

Over the last decade, an increasing amount of effort has been spent on constructing and, then, simulating powerful brain models that can greatly help in unraveling the mysteries of the human brain (see for instance the EU flagship Human Brain Project). Whereas these models are powerful and constantly come closer to...

  • Full Time
  • DATE POSTED: 17 Dec 2020

(MSc thesis topic) Performance and Algorithmic Optimization of a Novel Simulator for Spiking Neural Networks [Theme: BrainFrame]

Neurocomputing Lab · Netherlands

One of the most difficult challenges in Computational Neuroscience is to find adequate mathematical tools to simulate detailed biophysical models of neuronal networks accurately and fast. The computational demands of such simulations are huge and more so when we consider the problem size: thousands to millions of neuro...

  • Full Time
  • DATE POSTED: 08 Dec 2020

(MSc thesis topic) Exploration and Acceleration of Novel Mathematical Tools for Simulation of Spiking Neural Networks [Theme: BrainFrame]

Neurocomputing Lab · Netherlands

One of the most difficult challenges in Computational Neuroscience is to find adequate mathematical tools to simulate detailed biophysical models of neuronal networks accurately and fast. The computational demands of such simulations are huge and more so when we consider the problem size: thousands to millions of neuro...

  • Full Time
  • DATE POSTED: 08 Dec 2020