Mike Mace
PhD in Biomedical Engineering, Imperial College London, UK
MEng in Mechanical Engineering, University of Bristol, UK
Research Associate
Department of Bioengineering
Imperial College London
SW7 2AZ London, UK
Office: 4.28 RSM
Email: m.mace11@imperial.ac.uk
About me
Mike Mace is a research associate in the department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London. He obtained his Ph.D. in Biomedical engineering from Imperial College London in 2013 and MEng in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bristol in 2008. His primary research interest is in the neuromotor system and how it is affected following neurodegenerative and traumatic injury with the aim of developing useful rehabilitative and assistive technologies. By understanding the neurophysiology underlying motor pathologies and their associated clinical practises, he utilises core engineering design principles to develop intelligent robotic systems which aid the assessment, restoration and/or bypassing of functional loss. He currently works on rehabilitation and assessment devices for stroke and Parkinson’s disease using a patient-centric design approach in the Human Robotics Group of Prof. Etienne Burdet.
He has an ongoing collaboration with the Neuromodulation group of Dr. Dipankar Nandi (Charing Cross Hospital) carrying out research in the area of Parkinson’s disease, deep brain stimulation (DBS) and electrophysiological recordings. This has included research towards ‘closing-the-loop’ on DBS alongside complementary research into the extraction of gross movement behaviours from local field potentials recorded within the basal ganglia-brainstem system.
During his PhD, he developed a biosignal analysis framework for the real-time translation of volitional signals within human-machine interface (HMI) systems. This framework was applied to the decoding of novel bioacoustic tongue-movement where he was able to successfully extract and decode tongue-movement ear pressure signals. Such signals are generated through prescribed tongue ‘flicks’ which propagate mechanically to the ear canals and can be recording using simple microphones positioned comfortably within the ears thus providing a completely non-invasive, hygienic and affordable HMI system. This work was carried out in the lab of Dr. Ravi Vaidyanathan.