-------- Original Message --------
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 2010 19:05:10 +0000
From: Louis MAYAUD <[log in to unmask]>

Dear All,

The Raymond Poincaré Hospital in Paris (France) has an open position for
a Post-Doc to support clinical trials in Brain-Computer Interfaces, as
described in the enclosed document.
We would be really grateful if you were willing to diffuse this offer to
your communities.

With warmest regards

Louis Mayaud
CICIT - Hôpital Raymond Poincaré
92380 Garches - France
IBME - University of Oxford
OX3 7DQ - UK
FR +33650663491
UK +447985714784

OFFER:


    Environment




      Raymond Poincare hospital

Since 2005, the Raymond-Poincare hospital in Garches and Berck Maritime
Hospital (200 beds in rehabilitation), historically oriented in
management of disability, is creating a Group 1800 Hospital staff with
an annual budget approximately € 100 million. Today, the Hospital Group
is organized around three poles oriented toward taking care of people
with disabilities (Rehabilitation center-Assessment-Rehabilitation) of
children, especially suffering from neuromuscular disease (pediatric
center) and acute conditions: orthopedic surgery, infectious
diseases. Thus, while upholding its duties of care, teaching and
research, it is consolidating its international reputation as a center
of reference in support of comprehensive and multidisciplinary disability.




      The Centre for Clinical Investigation and technological Innovation
      (CICIT)


Within the Hospital Raymond Poincare you will join the CICIT whose
purpose is to centralize research activities of the various clinical
hospital services around three fields:

· Mobility: These projects focus on developing technologies to
improve efficiency wheelchairs whether manual or electric.

· Communication: There are projects designed to promote
communication interfaces of subjects with severe disabilities. It is the
development of phonation valves interfaced with a voice dictation
software, or development projects of innovative virtual keyboards.

· Ventilation support: These projects involve both the development
and evaluation of ventilation suitable for severely disabled subjects.



Context


      Robust Brain Computer Interface virtual Keyboard (RoBIK)

The principle of a Brain-Computer Interface or BCI is to control a
device through the extraction and interpretation of signal features from
electroencephalographic (EEG) collected on the surface of the scalp or
by the mean of invasive measurements. This old idea of communication
technique (Vidal 1973) offers the advantage to bypass need of muscle
activity in the control chain and therefore is naturally presented as a
promising alternative for restoration of control and communication of
people with neuromuscular (Wolpow, et al. 2002).

However BCI technology remains an object of study for research
laboratories, it is not disseminated to patients and people with
disabilities. To this, there are several reasons: lack of robustness and
ergonomics.**Therefore, despite the large number of research around this
topic today, there is no BCI system for users. The project you will work
on aims to develop a patient-dedicated application using OpenViBE
software and an open-source platform for developments.




      OpenViBE



The OpenViBE software (http://openvibe.inria.fr) is a free and
open-source software platform dedicated to designing, testing and using
brain-computer interfaces. Brain-Computer Interaction (or BCI)
corresponds to the direct use of brain signals to send "mental commands"
to an automated system such as a robot, prosthesis, or a cursor on a
computer screen. Typical BCI applications are medical (assistance to
disabled people, real-time biofeedback) and multimedia (virtual reality,
video games).






    Your Profile


      Diploma and Experience

You have an engineer degree or a PhD preferably in the field of
neurosciences.


      Past experiences

You have been involved in human research and have already been writing
articles. You're willing to carry out clinical trials in ICU and
therefore spend time with patients and medical staff. You're fluent in
C++ and able to develop some easy application in the scope of an
open-source project.


      Skills

Software skills: C++ (fluent), SVN, CSV, …

Research skills: writing and publishing articles, statistics

Others: EEG, signal processing, clinical




    Your Mission

You will work at the Raymond Poincare Hospital with the medical staff on
the project RoBIK Your missions will be:

1. Design application / tools on OpenViBE for research and in
particular clinical trials

2. Design clinical trials and go through process of ethical approval
with the help of medical team

3. Carry out studies with patients (under the principal
investigator's supervision) and healthy volunteers

4. Post-process and analyze data from clinical trials with the help
of a bio-statistician

5. Write and submit results to be published or for conferences

6. (Eventually) take part to the definition and founding process of
new/on-going projects with head of the unit.