Adrià Tauste Campo
Principal Investigator/Group Leader
Adrià Tauste Campo, PhD, is an Assistant Professor and leader of the BrainFocus Lab at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Spain. Dr. Tauste Campo obtained his degrees in Mathematics and Telecommunications Engineering at UPC (2006), his Master degree in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University , US (2009), and his doctorate degree in Information Theory at the University of Cambridge, UK (2011). During his postdoctoral stage, he obtained a Marie-Curie fellowship at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain, which was later followed by positions at two Medical Research centres (Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute and BarcelonaBeta Brain Research Centre, Barcelona, Spain). His current research spans two lines of investigation. First, he makes use of electrophysiological data and advanced computational tools to study the interconnections between the problems of neural coding/variability and neural communication. The goal of this line of research is investigate plausible information processing mechanisms explaining cognitive task performance in primates. Second, he relies on human intracranial EEG recordings from drug-resistance epileptic patients to identify the spatial extent of epileptic network, including the epileptic focus and related areas, and the dynamics of epileptic networks, specially during the hours/days preceding an epileptic seizure. The goal of this line of research is to develop new diagnostic techniques and biomarkers for epilepsy pre-surgical diagnosis and seizure prevention that can be transferred via software applications to improve the state-of-the-art treatment of epileptic patients.
email: adria.tauste@upc.edu
Manel Vila-Vidal
Postdoctoral Researcher
Manel Vila-Vidal is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the BrainFocus Lab (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, UPC), Visiting Researcher at the Computational Neuroscience Group (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, UPC) and Cofounder of the technology transfer project BrainFocus. Manel holds a BSc in Mathematics and a BSc in Physics from Universitat de Barcelona (2015), an MSc in Literary Theory and Comparative Literature from Universitat de Barcelona (2017) and a PhD in Biomedicine from Universitat Pompeu Fabra (2021). To pursue his PhD research, he received funding from “laCaixa” Foundation. In his PhD thesis, he developed clinical biomarkers for intracranial EEG (iEEG) pre-surgical diagnosis in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy, and investigated the interplay between local and global scales in brain activity in the context of simple cognitive tasks. His current research aims to identify the spatial extent of the epileptic network, to map propagation pathways during seizures and to understand the dynamics of epileptic networks in the transition from the pre-ictal to the ictal state. He is also investigating the neural correlates of stimulus processing and working memory during cognitive tasks with iEEG, and brain functional alterations in psychopathology with fMRI.
email: manel.vila-vidal [at] upc.edu
webpage: www.vila-vidal.com
Laura Bernáez Timón
Postdoctoral Researcher
Laura Bernáez Timón is graduated in Biomedical Engineering (BSc). As an undergraduate, she worked at the Advanced Imaging Unit of the Spanish Center for Cardiovascular Research. There, she worked in the development of nanoparticle-based contrast agents for medical imaging. Next, she studied Biophysics (MSc) and became interested in computational neuroscience. She was accepted into the Max Planck Planck Institute for Brain Research, where she pursues her Ph.D. thesis under the supervision of Prof. Tatjana Tchumatchenko. During her Ph.D., she focused on developing bio-inspired neural network models of the visual system to understand how some types of synaptic plasticity and connectivity play a role in the processing of sensory stimuli as well as in the generation of specific network dynamics. Apart from purely academic activities, she is interested in medical innovation and transferring academic knowledge into daily medical practice. In 2020, she could further develop this interest through her participation in the medical innovation think tank Catalyst Europe. All these experiences taught her that she enjoys and works best at the intersection of disciplines, basic research, and clinical application.
Carlota Pagès-Portabella
Postdoctoral Researcher
Carlota Pagès-Portabella graduated in Environmental Biology (BSc) from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and in a Degree in Modern Music and Jazz from Conservatori del Liceu (Berklee School of Music). Later, Carlota became interested in neuroscience and obtained an MSc in Brain and Cognition from Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF, 2017). Currently, Carlota pursues her Ph.D. in Biomedicine at the Center for Brain and Cognition (UPF) under the supervision of Prof. Juan Manuel Toro Soto. To pursue her Ph.D. research she received an F.I. grant from AGAUR. In her doctoral dissertation, she proposed an interdisciplinary project and benefited from her music knowledge and electrophysiology to understand the effects of musical training in the neural signatures of processing unexpected events. Besides her current research, Carlota is interested in the therapeutic applications of music in clinical contexts and aims to contribute through basic research in developing more informed approaches to musicotherapy. She is part of our team as Project Manager, where she leads the multicentric validation of BrainFocus software prototype.
Nicolás Medina
Predoctoral Researcher / PhD student
Nicolas Medina is a PhD student at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Spain. Nicolas holds a BSc in Electronic Engineering from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (2016), an MSc in Biomedical Engineering from Universitat de Barcelona (2021) and now is pursuing the PhD in Computational and Applied Physics at UPC. He did his master’s thesis on computational neuroscience and he has recently joined the group in order to develop of a real-time clinical monitoring system for seizure prevention in drug-resistant epileptic patients with intracranial recordings.
Raul Adell
Research assistant
Raul Adell is a master’s student at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Spain. He graduated from Engineering Physics at UPC in 2022 and is now pursuing the master in Advanced Mathematics and Mathematical Engineering also at UPC. He did his bachelor’s thesis on computational neuroscience and he has recently joined the group in order to study human neural correlates of working memory during a visuospatial detection task.
Ferran Craven-Bartle Corominas
Research assistant
Ferran Craven is a master’s student in Biomedical Engineering at Universitat de Barcelona (UB) – Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), Spain. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Technology Engineering from UPC (2022). He did his bachelor’s thesis on neural networks applied to medical data processing and is currently working on neural regeneration techniques at Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC). He has joined the group to study connectivity measures of SEEG signals for seizure onset zone identification on epilepsy patients.