About Florentine:

I graduated with a BSc in 2014, and a MSc in 2016, in Life Sciences and Technologies from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (Switzerland).

I conducted my first neuroscience research as an undergraduate in the laboratories of Prof. Silvestro Micera and Prof. Grégoire Courtine. My bachelor’s thesis consisted in quantifying the effects of a unilateral pyramidotomy on rats’ locomotion. Using movement tracking software and MATLAB programming, I analysed animal behavioural data and investigated the locomotion differences between a healthy and a lesioned population.

Then, I completed my MSc research project as an exchange student in Dr. Mohammed Milad’s laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard Medical School of Boston, USA.  My research project involved the study of inter-individual differences in brain activation patterns during a fear conditioning protocol in human subjects. I analysed fMRI and behavioural data from a cohort of healthy humans who underwent a Pavlovian fear conditioning paradigm.

I moved to Dublin (Ireland) in 2018 when I was hired as a Research Scientist by the company Cumulus Neuroscience Ltd (www.cumulusneuro.com). A year later, I started an industrial PhD in collaboration with Rob’s laboratory, funded by the Irish Research Council, looking at the usability and quality of dry EEG data when collected in the wild. 

Current Research:

Cumulus Neuroscience have developed a mobile dry-EEG headset designed to be used by non-experts, in any setting. The headset communicates wirelessly with a tablet on which synchronised tasks can be presented. Unlike standard EEG equipment, the Cumulus headset does not rely on manually applied conductive gel to make contact between electrodes and the scalp. Instead, dry-sensor electrodes make direct contact. Sessions can be carried out by technicians with minimal training at any clinical trial or other site, and participants can also administer their own recording sessions at home. In this it becomes possible to sample brain activity frequently, longitudinally and a widely distributed manner (McWilliams et al., 2021).

My PhD objective is to investigate the reliability of longitudinal dry wireless EEG recordings and evaluate its performance when deployed in the wild. I am specifically interested in the usability of the device and the quality of the recordings. Additionally, I also intend to investigate the impact of lifestyle factors on EEG data

Professional Profiles

Contact me

fbarbey(at)tcd(dot)ie