من أدهم..عن أي شيء

Dr. Theodore Berger

“Don’t let anything stop you!”
This was the last thing Dr.Berger told me when i visited his lab in USC yesterday. It was one of the most important days in my life.
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Three weeks earlier :
i searched the web for the BCI project as i told you. And sent about 10 emails to professors around the states asking for meetings to visit their labs and talk to them. I also sent Dr.Ahmed Zewail.
Got response from 3 labs, one in Florida, one in NY and the third is Dr. Theodore Burger’s assistant who scheduled a meeting with me on May 12th. During the last weeks, he sent me to reschedule it to be on the 13th as Dr. Burger had a conference on the 12th! This is why i came back to California from Louisiana instead of going to Florida. Dr.Burger’s lab is working on a great invention from my point of view. He is working on a brain chip that will replace the CA3 area in the hippocampus of the human brain to treat Alzheimer. Although the research is still in the early beginning, they are doing a great job. Yesterday, i was lucky enough to visit this lab and today i am telling you the story and writing what i saw yesterday.
It might be a bit a long story, but believe me it is worth it.

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My meeting was scheduled with Dr. Burger from 12:00 to 1:00 pm which is usually the lunch time. I have prepared a list of questions and some points i wanted his advice in.
Went out Mim’s house by 7:00 am in the morning and headed towards Los Angeles where the USC, University of Southern California, is. It is a private university, one of the most expensive and high class universities in the country.
I was at his office by 11:50 and kept waiting till 12:30 when he showed up. 30 minutes were enough for me. Once i saw him entering the building, i went to greet him, checked hands and went back out again. He took me in a tour around the campus showing me different engineering schools. I didnt even have the chance to introduce myself. Just knowing my name, he started talking.
After showing me different buildings, he started talking about his research. His lab is divided into three groups and collaborating with two groups, one in North Carolina and the other is in Kentucky i think. Anyways, i got the chance to visit his three research subunits. My visit to his lab ended at 5:30 pm.. 5 hours touring and learning about what they are doing.. that was a lifetime experience.

The beginning was in the first group where i met three chinese researchers. small 4 rooms and a small lobby held them together. One of them was the senior and he was an assistant professor. Here begins the fun, he invented a model on the computer which mimics the CA3 area in the hippocampus. This is what they are working on actually, improving this model till it is theoretically very efficient then they implemented it on slices from a brain of a rat. The next step was implementing the system in a behaving alive rat and recording the performance in real time.
The second researcher was a PhD student whom his job was to work on improving the model of the action potential in an electronic circuit. Also he worked on introducing a glass electrode in the neurone to record the electric activity of the neurone. I got to see the places where they killed the rat and they explained to me how they took the brain slices and how they inserted the glass electrode in his kept-alive in vitro nervous tissue. Yes! it was amazing. The third researcher was Rosa and her job was to analyze the input of the neurones reaching the CA3 area and the output. Comparing them and trying to identify a pattern.

That was pretty much of it. They took me out to lunch on Dr. Berger’s expanse and we got some time to talk. It was great sitting with scientists working on an invention that is crazy and that will change the people’s live after many years! Who knows.

Then i got the chance to talk to Jean-Marrie another researcher from France. His work was to develop a computer system that will predict the output of a synaptic stimulation given few data. For instance you feed the system with some data about the voltage of the stimulation or the calcium influx, and the system gives you the levels of different channels and other changes that happened in the cell. He is using Java programming language and is almost done with the system that took him a couple of years. He is working in partnership with a French drugs company. They will use this system to calculate the effect of different drugs on the brain and saving hours of calculations and measurements. As you might know that all the drugs working on the brain are actually working on the synapses of the brain and the neurotransmitters most of the time inhibiting some or stimulating others. Was an enriching conversation as well.

Next i moved to the Smart Sensors group. This one is merely engineering but was incorporated in this bioengineering lap because they study the special sense organs and try to get inspired by them and mimic them to build sensor devices. they were 3 Irani guys and one Asian. They showed me the projects that they were working on and they were really wow!

One of them had a project of detecting the walking pattern beside a fence. So if you walk beside that fence, the system will realize that you are a human and not a dog and not a vehicle. then it will give output to whatever other system that will deal with this information. The other engineer’s job was to detect the vehicles, Just by recording the sound around the fence, they could determine the vehicle type and some information about it like how many cylinders it has. It also substract noises from other engines.

The third researcher built a smart helmet for the soldiers that will automatically detect the direction of the source of the gunshot, analyze that and provide data about the distance, and location of the source. Giving this information to the soldier in a visualized way saving him a lot of time and distraction.

This unit usually dealt with defence projects. The organization that is supporting this lap is the same one which invented the internet and Artifical Intelligence, DARPA. google it and you will love me

At the end of the day. I sat with Doctor Burger. Actually i waited for him because he had a meeting with Dr. Humayun who is an ophthalmology surgeon working on artificial retina research where they implant a camera instead of a blind eye and connect it to the brain to restore vision!

Dr. Humayun

When i met doctor Berger, i told him about my goal and the possibility of joining his team, he welcomed but required few things that i do. He suggested that i need to take a couple of math courses as i didnt study any of them in the medical school also, he said that i need some lab experience and specially in the electrophysiology labs. I asked him if he can recommend any labs in Europe, he suggested one in Israel! i told him that it is not possible, he then suggested another one in Switzerland where they work on the Blue Brain Project. and gave me the professor’s name. Who knows? i will try to contact them when i go back.

Joining the team as a PhD student can be one possible way of my future. I wasnt sure if this meeting will do any good for me but now i realize that it was really fruitful and added tons of things to me, opened many doors and i got to meet real scientists and believed that i am nothing less than them

I hope this day will be a beginning of a non-ending journey to the achievements. May Allah help us all..

Best wishes from Downtown LA

Adham