After doing her postdoc at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Dr. Chen was promoted to senior researcher. There, she developed 3D modeling and printing techniques to create customized cranial implants to improve implant stability and animal welfare. She also co-developed a 1024-channel prosthesis for recording and electrical stimulation of the cortex.
These technological innovations allowed her to carry out challenging behavioral therapies in monkeys, establishing proof-of-concept for the feasibility of using brain interfaces to generate artificial vision in the blind. Based on these results, she co-founded Phosphoenix, a neurotech startup that aims to develop clinical devices that allow profoundly blind people to regain functional vision.
- Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Postdoctoral Researcher
- Newcastle University, PhD in Visual Neuroscience
Education & Training
The Chen lab develops high-channel-count, chronically implantable devices to record from and stimulate the brain. We harness cutting-edge developments in electrode fabrication and microelectronics to improve probe durability and biocompatibility, generating fundamental neuroscientific knowledge and translating results from the lab to the clinic.
Our applications include the restoration of life-enhancing vision in the blind. Blindness affects 40 million people worldwide, with a wide variety of causes, including injury to or degeneration of the retina and optic nerve. Brain implants interface directly with visual regions in the brain, bypassing the retina and optic nerve to produce artificially generated percepts without input from the eye.
We use devices with >1000 channels to interface with large areas of the visual cortex, delivering tiny electrical currents to elicit the perception of dots of light (known as ‘phosphenes’). We deliver stimulation across multiple electrodes simultaneously, inducing percepts composed of multiple phosphenes, and causing our subjects to see movement, and simple shapes such as letters.
Our work has been featured in numerous international and national newspapers, radio and television, including CNN, Science Magazine, Science Podcasts, Scientific American, Het Parool, De Volkskrant, El País, NOS, NPO Radio, and RTL News.
Publications