We are proud to report PhD student John Wesley Ephraim from the Enhanced Regenerative Medicine research line at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia attended the EMBO workshop “Neural Stem cells: from basic understanding to translational applications" that took place in Kyllini, Greece, 5 - 9 June 2022. He presented a poster based on HERMES investigation “Tuning the fate of hippocampal neural stem cells in vitro by modulating their microenvironment ”

“Cosa abbiamo nella testa? ” (“What’s inside my head”?) is an educational workshop that took place on Tue, May 31st in Genoa with the young students of the Primary School "Natale Gallino" to discover the brain through an interactive lesson and playful activities. The event was organized in collaboration with HERMES project coordinator Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia Enhanced Regenerative Medicine Lab researcher Gemma Palazzolo, and Eurokleis Srl that is the consortium partner responsible for communication and dissemination. In May - Mental Health Awareness Month, the educational workshop was effective in raising awareness of the importance of brain health for all our vital functions!

Our consortium member CSIC presented “A Hybrid Memristor/CMOS SNN for Implementing One-Shot Winner-Takes-All Training” at ISCAS 2022 in Austin, Texas, during the session named “Recent Progress in Theory & Applications of Memristive Technologies Toward a New Era in Electronic IV” the was hold in presence.

We are proud to report Eve McGlynn, María Cerezo Sánchez and Finlay Walton from our consortium partner University of Glasgow - Microelectronics Lab (meLAB), attended the James Watt Nanofabrication Centre Mini-Conference on May 17th, 2022 to present the HERMES project to researchers in nano fabrication, with a 3-minute thesis talk and poster. The James Watt Nanofabrication Centre is the UK's leading Nanofabrication cleanroom based at the University of Glasgow.

Our consortium partner CSIC, in the person of their PI Prof. Bernabé Linares-Barranco, joined a brilliant workgroup day under the title of “Bridging materials to neuromorphic systems and applications” on March 28th 2022 for the Neuro-Inspired Computing Elements (NICE) Conference. Four workgroups of Science, Industry, Ethics, and Bridge presented and discussed their own perspective on how the neuromorphic field can close the gap between materials and devices to systems and applications. Prof. Bernabé Linares-Barraco spoke about HERMES in relation to the FET call framework during the Science & Technology session.

HERMES project participated to the Brain Awareness Week 2022 by holding an interactive workshop “The Future of Brain Health. Decoding the brain through research” with students of the Institut International Saint-Dominique in Rome. The event was organized in collaboration between consortium partner Eurokleis srl , project coordinator the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia and Dana Foundation, promoting the importance of the knowledge of this fascinating and partly unknown organ, the brain, and how science impacts on searching for new cures.

"Science is ready" is a monthly appointment promoted by the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia for having lunch by listening to stories of science and technology concerning IIT research projects funded by the European Commission. We are glad to report HERMES project coordinator Gabriella Panuccio joined the first talk under the title "Neuroscience of the future".

We are glad to report our consortium member University of Glasgow - Microelectronics Lab (meLAB) Research Team representative Ms Eve McGlynn - joined the "Emerging technologies 2021" virtual meeting as guest speaker. The meeting was promoted by the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences Emerging Technologies Focus Group.

Our consortium partner CRID – UNIMORE Centro di Ricerca in the person of its PI Dr. Giulia CURIA presented “In vivo epilepsy model and grafting: a step towards enhanced regenerative medicine” at the Symposium in memory of Prof. Jacopo Magistretti, full professor of Physiology at the Department of Biology and Biotechnology L. Spallanzani of the University of Pavia.

Our project coordinator Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia - Laboratory of Enhanced Regenerative Medicine, Tissue Engineering Unit’s researchers Gemma Palazzolo and Natalia Gostynska presented two posters based on HERMES investigation at the 6th world congress of the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS2021).

A presentation under the title "Development of robust and reproducible murine brain organoids endowed with networks of functional neurons and specific brain-region signature" by Dr. Francesca Ciarpella as representative of our consortium member Università degli Studi di Verona was held at the 50th Annual Meeting of Society for Neuroscience virtual edition November 8-11, 2021.

We are glad to report our consortium member The Institute for Biomedical Reserch (IBSAL) participated in the 19th Annual Meeting of The Spanish Society of  #Neuroscience  that was held in Lleida (ES) on 3-5 November 2021.

A brilliant conference about mapping the brain and its functions "Le vie del cervello sono infinite/The (path)ways of the Brain are Infinite" was held 1st November 6pm at Genoa Science Festival, in collaboration with Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia and a group of HERMES  researchers.

Our consortium partner  Tampere University - Computational Biophysics and Imaging Group (CBIG) - in the person of its PI  Jari Hyttinen organized a Special Session under the title "Astrocytes in modulation of subcellular and cellular molecular neuronal communication" at the 8th ACM International Conference on Nanoscale Computing and Communication Virtual Conference, September 7-9, 2021.

Our consortium partner UNIMORE Centro di Ricerca - Interdepartmental Center for Neuroscience and Neurotechnology at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy), in the person of its team PI Giulia Curia, Elisa Ren and Stefania Bartoletti presented two posters acknowledging HERMES project’s investigation at the 71st National Congress of The Italian Society of Physiology - 7, 8 and 9 September 2021.

71st SIF National Congress

Our consortium's partner University of Glasgow - Microelectronics Lab (meLAB), School of Engineering – presented "Serpentine-Shaped Metamaterial Energy Harvester for Wearable and Implantable Medical Systems" at ISCAS 2021 virtual conference (Korea, 22-28 May), Special Session: New Approaches for Interfacing Electronic & Biological Systems Session Systems II.

ISCAS 2021

Our consortium partner Aarhus University - Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering – participated in ISCAS 2021 virtual conference (Korea, 22-28 May), session title: Neuromorphic Systems II. On May 25th they presented "Flexible Energy Efficient Implementation of Adaptive Spiking Encoder for Neuromorphic Processors" a paper by Milad Zamani, Margherita Ronchini, Hooman Farkhani, Farshad Moradi and Hai Au Huynh.

ISCAS 2021

Our consortium partner Aarhus University - Dept. of Engineering – coordinated by PI prof Farshad Moradi, presented "Input Impedance Multi-Channel Neural Recording Amplifier with 0.77 µVrms Input-Referred Noise for Deep Brain Implants" at 2021 IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC) - Amplifier Techniques session.

On March 30^th a joint lab online meeting was organized by HERMES_FET and IN-FET project coordinators Michele Giugliano (SISSA) and Gabriella Panuccio (IIT): representatives from both consortia presented each task, shared their insights and debated their novel approaches to cure epilepsy and brain disorders.

“Almost all people with epilepsy will need to stay on medical therapy to minimize the probability of having a seizure. With HERMES and IN-FET we are trying to make a difference to heal epilepsy rather than treating it.”

HERMES-FET project coordinator Gabriella Panuccio

An interview with Gabriella Panuccio, coordinator of the IIT research line “Enhanced Regenerative Medicine” was published in March 2021 for the new column Principal Investigator Profiles introducing the 79 PIs at IIT – Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia..

Our consortium partner Università di Verona (UNIVR) – Dept. of Diagnostics and Public Health - participated in the 40° Congresso Nazionale della Società Italiana di Farmacologia (SIF) digital week 9-13 March 2021: the PI Ilaria Decimo presented data relating to organoids developed for HERMES project “Setting up 3D in vitro brain model for drug discovery: molecular and functional characterization”

The latest edition of "Symbols" magazine, published by the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia - UNIMORE, presents HERMES among some other ongoing EU funded research projects in the Dept. of Biomedical, Metabolic and Neuroscience Sciences - Physiology and Neuroscience. Ample space is dedicated to HERMES with an exhaustive introduction of the project concept and mission, a description of the consortium members, and two questions about the biohybrid systems for brain regeneration that is the core investigation in HERMES vision of novel approaches to cure the disabled brain.

Article also talks about UNIMORE ’s task within the consortium...

On the 15th of November 2019 Carlo Ierna from Radboud Universiteit attended the Dutch Research School of Philosophy (OZSW) yearly conference where he presented his work within HERMES project

HERMES project partners from Aarhus University participated in the Intel Neuromorphic Research Community (Intel NRC) networking meeting presenting their tasks in the project.

Future Tech Week is an initiative of the European Innovation Council Pathfinder.

It is a unique opportunity to present the Future and Emerging Technologies and the ideas behind.

On Saturday August 31st another outreach and fundraising event was organized by the NEUROSpritz association, at Priamar Fortress in Savona, Italy. Our project coordinator Gabriella Panuccio was invited to talk about the HERMES project and biohybrid brain regeneration to the public.

NEUROSpritz is a non-profit science-oriented organization born with the goal of reaching out to the public about the Neurosciences. It organizes theme evenings where topics of braod interest and scientific news are presented in an engaging atmosphere by invited experts in the field. It also organizes fundraising events to support scientific research for neurodegenerative disorders.

You may find more from the event and more info on the initiative in the NEUROSpritz Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/neurospritz.it and website https://neurospritz.wixsite.com/neurospritz.

On May 20^th 2019 our coordinator Gabriella Panuccio together with co-PI Gemma Palazzolo introduced the concepts of enhanced regenerative medicine in an informal outreach setting: Pint of Science (Italian chapter).

Pint of Science is a global Science festival where scientists of any discipline communicate and discuss about their latest research with a non-scientific audience in an informal setting, with the aim of making Science accessible to anyone. Events are held in pubs, where, for the price of a beer, everyone may attend the event and directly engage with the scientists presenting their work in simple words. 

At Neuroscience day, the project partners gave an overview of the HERMES project and presented the envisioned approach elaborated by Aarhus University for recording signal from the brain to be implemented in Hardware and integrated with the spiking neural network chip.

99 universities and research centers in 15 countries around the world held  the eleventh edition of UniStem Day  the journey in research starting from stem cells.
On Friday 15 March, scientists from the University of Verona set up the largest scientific dissemination event dedicated to high school students. The HERMES researchers team attended this important event.

The Kick Off Meeting of HERMES project was held in Rome.  During the 3 days meeting each project partner has presented its contribution to the project. The consortium is presented by different profiles: biotechnologists, biologists, medical doctors, electrical and computer engineers, business consultants, ethics and policy experts, specialists in Artificial Intelligence etc.