Author: vgiagka

Raphael Panskus @CyBioEl 2026

Our team member and PhD candidate Raphael Panskus will be traveling to Paphos, Cyprus this October (19-21) to attend CyBioEl 2026 and present his work on the topic of “Ultrasound-transparent neural interfaces for multimodal interaction”.

If you are attending reach out to Raphael! He would love to interact and talk about his work!

Stefania Tsilivaki presenting @MNE 2026

SoMa member and PhD candidate Stefania Tsilivaki will be presenting her work this year at the 52nd Micro and Nano Engineering Conference 2026, which will be taking place at Interlaken, Switzerland between the 21st -24th September.

Visit her poster “An in vitro neuroelectronic platform integrating bilayer X-Cut LiNbO3 PMUTs for in situ monitoring of focused ultrasound stimulation (FUS)“, she will be looking forward to the discussions!

Maria Camarena Perez speaking @Graphene Week 2026

SoMa member and PhD candidate Maria Camarena Perez will be speaking this year at the Graphene Week 2026 in Porto, Portugal.

Her talk “Nanotexturised transfer-free, multilayer graphene as neural electrodes” is scheduled for the 23rd of September during the Bioelectronics & Neural Interfaces session. If you are there, Maria will be looking forward to interact and exchange ideas!

Dr. Andra Velea @BEM Summit 2026

The SoMa team will be returning this year to the Bioelectronic Medicine Summit, which is held between Sept. 28-29, in New York, USA.

This time, Dr. Andrada I. Velea will be traveling to represent our lab and present our group work on the topic of “Thermoplastic Polyurethane as a Novel, Versatile Material for Multimodal Neural Interfaces”.

If you are attending reach out to Andra, she is looking forward to interact and discuss the prospects of this work!

We are very excited to be talking about this technology that we have in the making for a while and that has become a core for the neural interfaces built within our team. We also have a preprint that describes the foundations of this technology which will be up soon! Stay tuned!

Niloufar Behzadpour presenting @FUN26

Our team member and PhD candidate Niloufar Behzadpour attended this year’s Focused Ultrasound Neuromodulation Conference held in Paris between July 22-24, 2026.

Niloufar presented her poster “Developing an integrated in vitro platform for exploring multimodal interaction of low-intensity focused ultrasound and electrical stimulation” during the conference, enjoyed stimulating scientific discussions, and came back full of motivation and new ideas!

Somatic Circuits @ Festival der Zukunft

The SoMa Lab has been teaming up with the Circular Design Lab, media artist Marlot Meyer, and the curator Pierre Wolter (Gallery Art Claims Impulse) to form Somaric Circuits.

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This is a result of an arts&science project at the intersection of neuro-electronics and interactive media art, funded by the WKD programme of the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft in order to translate hard science in a public experience.

The Somatic Circuits team was present this July at the Festival of the Future (Festival der Zukunft), hosted by the Deutsches Museum in Munich, to discuss our interactive exhibition that turns neuronal communication into a physical experience. Visitors could test our inflatable wearables at our booth or join our discussion “Creativity in Dialogue: What unites and divides artists and scientists?” on the 2nd of July at 14:15 in the Future Box, Deutsches Museum.

Special thanks to Raphael Panskus and Ridley Vaughan for representing the SoMa team in Munich!

Read the relevant article on our Fraunhofer IZM webpage: https://www.izm.fraunhofer.de/en/news/somatic-circuits.html

Best poster award for Dr. Christos Pavlou @2D-NL

The SoMa Lab was present this year at the 2D-NL Conference which was held in Eindhoven, The Netherlands between the 26 and 27 of May 2026.

Our PI, Vasiliki Giagka, gave an invited talk on the topic of “Optically transparent neural interfaces based on transfer-free multilayer graphene“.

Our postdoc, Dr. Christos Pavlou, presented his poster “Transparent Graphene MEAs for Ex Vivo and Implantable Neural Interfaces” and won the best poster award! Congratulations, Christos!

Vasiliki Giagka speaks at the Nature Conference on Flexible Electronics

Our PI, Vasiliki Giagka, travelled recently to Xi’an, China to give an invited talk at the 4th Nature Conference on Flexible Electronics – Transforming Technology for Human Health.

Her talk “Conformal Neuroelectronics”, brought together everything our group at Deflt University of Technology and at Fraunhofer IZM has been working toward: soft, multimodal, neural interfaces that combine electrical, optical and acoustic modalities to interface with the nervous system in a way that is precise, stable and built to last.