 So many people around the world are living with some loss of upper limb function and in many cases their brain activity is still sound So if we can record that brain activity and then decode it to try and figure out what they're trying to do We can then make a robotic prosthetic execute that function for them. I think that'll give them greater independence in our life I'm Sam Parker. I'm studying a bachelor of electrical engineering at the University of Newcastle When you are trying to move your hand your brain generates an electrical signal and that electrical signal travels to your scalp But we can measure it using the electrosencephalography or EEG We can digitize that signal and then send it to a computer chip for further processing I use a machine learning approach to decide whether you're trying to open your hand or close your hand And once I've decided what you're trying to do I will then make the arm do that motion Working with specialized hardware I needed to design custom PCBs custom circuit boards to in order to use them properly and that was a bit of a design Challenge you need to go through the documentation and figure out how I'm going to implement it and then also trying to determine the signal Against the noise. It's a very very small signal We're trying to read and so trying to determine what the person's trying to do when we read their signals It was really quite complicated One of the goals of my project was to make a very simple brain computer interface And that's really what I have achieved in the project So it was a great experience and really allowed me to get my feet wet in brain computer interfaces This is where I want to be heading in the future years with research later this year I'm heading to Brown University in the United States where I'll be doing my PhD in biomedical engineering Focusing on brain computer interfaces Brown University is one of the top schools for brain computer interfaces in the world So it's really been a dream come true Studying my undergraduate degree at the University of Newcastle I feel like has really prepared me well for my PhD at Brown We were able to cover a broad range of fundamentals But then through selecting my electives and my directed courses I could really specialize on my area of interest and what I'm hoping my research will do will be to create more advanced Prosthetics so I can help people who have lost upper limb function get a second grasp on life and greater independence