University College London. Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow and Reader in Biomedical Engineering. Lead Multi-Modal Spectroscopy Group UCL

Dr Tachtsidis is a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellow and Reader in Biomedical Engineering at University College London, UK. He is a senior member of the Biomedical Optics Research Laboratory and heads the Multi-Modal Spectroscopy Group. His research is highly multi-disciplinary, crossing the boundaries between engineering, physics, neuroscience and clinical medicine. The technical focus of his work is the development and use of non-invasive optical instruments and techniques for monitoring brain oxygenation, haemodynamics andmetabolism. A major part of Dr Tachtsidis research is to investigate the use and limitations of functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy or fNIRS in neuroscience applications. 

Neurologist and Neurointensivist University of Pennsylvania.

Ramani Balu, MD/PhD completed his undergraduate training in Biological Sciences at Duke University, Durham, USA, and subsequently received a master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA.  He then went to medical school and received a PhD in Neuroscience from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, USA, after which he received further clinical training in Neurology and Neurocritical Care at the University of Pennsylvania.  He is currently an assistant professor of Neurology in the division of Neurocritical Care at U Penn with secondary appointments in the departments of Neurosurgery and Anesthesiology/Critical Care Medicine.  Dr. Balu is broadly interested in developing novel methods to continuously monitor brain function at the bedside, and has clinical research efforts investigating the use of fNIRS and related technologies to measure cerebral metabolism, blood flow, and neurovascular coupling after acute brain injury.  

Professor of Medical Physics University College London. President of The Society for Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy

Professor of Medical Physics in the Department of Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering at UCL. Clare leads the Near Infrared Spectroscopy research group developing novel optical systems for monitoring and imaging the human body and is president of the SfNIRS. Her research projects include studies of autism, acute brain injury in adults, children and infants, sports performance, migraine and malaria. Clare presently leads the Brain Imaging for Global Health (BRIGHT)  project investigating malnutrition-related brain development in Gambian infants, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Professor Keio University, Tokyo. fNIRS in Autism Spectrum disorder, prematurity, language development.

Yasuyo Minagawa is a professor of the Department of Psychology at Keio University. She directs the Keio Baby Lab, where behavioral and neurocognitive studies on both typically and atypically developing infants and children are carried out. She received her Ph.D. in medicine from the University of Tokyo in 2000, after which she has engaged in various research projects as a postdoctoral fellow at LSCP Ecole Normale Supérieure-CNRS and national institute for Japanese language and linguistics. Her research has examined the development of perception and cognition with a focus on language acquisition and social cognition. Her current research program with fNIRS explores early neuronal predictors of developmental disabilities by examining infants at-risk for autism spectrum disorders and preterm infants.

Biomedical Optics Research Laboratory (BORL), Department of Neonatology, University Hospital Zurich, University of Zurich

Dr. Felix Scholkmann received his PhD at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, in 2014. A postdoc and research associate at the Biomedical Optics Research Laboratory of the University Hospital Zurich as well as at the University of Bern, his research focuses on biomedical signal processing, biomedical optics (development and application of cerebral NIRS oximetry and fNIRS), neuroscience (neurophotonics), biophysics (bioelectromagnetics and photobiology) and integrative human physiology (integrated physiological measurement, computational modelling). He completed research stays at universities and institutions in the UK, Germany, Japan, Korea, Italy and the Netherlands. At the Department of Neonatology, he is involved in several projects using NIRS oximetry and fNIRS to investigate cerebral oxygenation and hemodynamics in preterm neonates.