ENGINEERING+HEALTH
Decoding brainwaves PhD student Daniel Leong has always dreamed of controlling devices with his mind
daniel leong engineering phd student
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inspired Daniel to uturistic movies and games g and delve deeper study biomedical engineerin a reality. into how to make his dream ool and studying sch h hig After graduating from ineering at the a Bachelor of Biomedical Eng iel moved to Sydney to University of Melbourne, Dan UTS Computational do a master’s degree at the er Interface Lab. Intelligence and Brain Comput worked on decoding For his master’s project, he ins produce when the signals that people’s bra example, whether thinking about navigation. For to go left or right. which uses a This led into his PhD project, control Defence robots brain-computer interface to d vehicles. such as drones and small lan ds to a specific Daniel says the system respon r wears a virtual reality stimulus in the brain. The use ere they want the robot headset and thinks about wh rface decodes the brain to go. The brain machine inte ssly to the robot. signal and transmits it wirele fence use, but could De “It’s been developed for lities,” Daniel says. also help people with disabi
for brain signal processing, coding skills are a must” Not just the br ain
Daniel specialises in brain signal processin g, but biomedical engineers also tap into the signa ls in other parts of the bo dy. “Biosignal processin g is not just about brain signals, but mu scle signals and hear t signals too,” he says. For brain signal proces sing, Daniel says codin g skills are a must, and it’s a good idea to ke ep up with the latest developme nts in AI and machine lea rn ing. If you’re more intereste d in understanding ho w the brain works, neuroscie nce may be your perfe ct fit. And there are plenty of opportunities to ma ke your mark in overcom ing the challenges of decoding brain signals to make mind-controlled devic es accessible to ever yone . “We are still pretty far of f – this is ongoing research,” Daniel says . – Nadine Cranenburgh Bachelor of Biomedical Engineering, University of Melbourne
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Master of Science (Biomedical Engineering), UTS
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PhD, UTS