Fahimeh Akbarian
Biography
After graduating as a robotic engineer and working in the robotics and automation industry, I joined a research group at Tehran University of Medical Sciences focusing on the personalized cancer immunotherapy. By applying my mathematical background in a biological context for the first time, I have proposed a game theory-based model for the interaction between immune and tumour cells.
To pursue my ambition of becoming a biomedical engineer, I enrolled in the Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering program offered jointly by VUB and Gent University in 2019. Since my long-term goal is to work at the crossroads of fundamental research and industry, I gained valuable experience by doing an internship and a part-time job student at icometrix nv in the summer of 2020. Icometrix provides value-based care for people with neurological conditions. This experience sparked my interest in neuroscience.
I did my master’s thesis under the supervision of Prof. Van Schependom and Prof. Nagels at the AIMS research group. I established a pipeline to automatically analyse the dynamic connectivity patterns in resting-state magnetoencephalographic data from multiple sclerosis patients and healthy subjects.
From January to October 2021, I worked as a signal processing engineer on a project funded by Innoviris at Prof. Johan Stiens’ lab. The results of this project are currently being considered for a patent application on which I will be a co-inventor.
In October 2021, I started my PhD at the AIMS research group supervised by Prof. Van Schependom and Prof. Nagels. My research is mainly focused on the neurophysiological signal (MEG/EEG) analysis of patients with different neurological conditions (e.g., multiple sclerosis and epilepsy) to develop and elaborate new biomarkers.
Presentations
- I presented my research findings at the IMSCOGS conference at the University of Bordeaux, France, May 18th and 19th, 2022.
- I was also awarded a travel grant to attend the BIOMAG2022 conference at the University of Birmingham, UK, August 28th to September 1st, 2022, to present my recent research findings during the poster session.