Biomimetic neuromorphic systems for real-time closed-loop bio-hybrid systems with Timothée Levi

For the last NTC seminar of the academic year, we had the distinct pleasure of hosting Dr. Timothée Levi (IMS Bordeaux), a leading figure in the field of neuromorphic engineering.

His presentation focused on his journey in creating bio-mimetic artificial neurons and interfacing them in real-time and closed loop with actual neurons from living samples !

He first developed his artificial neuron models on field programmable gate array, then put them to test on reductionist robotic models such as oscillating snake-like robots. His last advances were impressively demonstrating a closed loop neural network embedding his artificial neurons with real ones in a wireless manner, therefore creating a distributed hybrid neural network.

His interdisciplinary work combining expertise in neuroscience, engineering, computer science, and electronics was absolutely impressive and sparked the interest of a broad audience, even when their research subject felt quite far from Dr. Levi.

INT research teams also took this seminar opportunity to meet and discuss about their current project with Dr. Levi, hopefully sawing seeds of future collaborations between institutes.

We were really delighted by the talk and work he presented that really showcases the type of things we aspire to develop in the NeuroTech Center of Marseille.