We seek a PhD student with a background in physics or engineering, who has a strong computational skillset. This student will design a device and algorithms that can focus an ultrasound beam across the human skull while simultaneously imaging the procedure. This involves creating the device on a computer and simulating the emission and reception of ultrasound using a wave propagation toolbox (k-wave). This work involves coding, mathematics, and algorithm development; and experimental work to validate the simulations. The devices and algorithms designed by you will be built by a post-doctoral research associate with expertise in transducers and circuits. Together, you will be creating next generation noninvasive microsurgical devices.
Your work would fit within a larger research programme involving 8 principal investigators, 4 post-doctoral researchers, and 3 PhD students from Imperial College London, King’s College London, University of Arizona, and the University of Michigan.
The programme aims to build a noninvasive technology for precisely delivering distinct drugs to targeted brain regions with exceptional spatial and temporal control. Our approach will engineer particles capable of carrying drug payloads that release only in response to specific remote signals. Furthermore, we will develop a device to direct these signals to specific brain regions, enabling precise targeting. We will validate this platform in rats and rabbits, demonstrating the controlled release of multiple drugs to different areas of the brain. Using these technical innovations, we will perform “mosaic neuropharmacology”—a novel method for manipulating neural circuits across the brain noninvasively in both space and time. This platform will represent the most advanced tool for brain-targeted material delivery, offering tremendous potential for neuroscientists and neurologists to explore and treat neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders more effectively.
Neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders account for 21% of the global disease burden, surpassing all other health condition. Growing evidence suggests that many of these disorders stem from abnormalities in neural circuits—complex networks of neurons that communicate across various regions of the brain. These circuits are composed of diverse cell types, each contributing to the brain’s overall function. When these circuits malfunction, the result can be significant cognitive, emotional, sensory, or motor impairments, underscoring the complexity of these disorders and the challenges in treating them.
Instead of viewing conditions like depression, epilepsy, or post-traumatic stress disorder as isolated brain malfunctions, we now recognize them as disruptions in specific neural circuits. These disruptions may occur between distinct brain regions or within more localized networks. Consequently, there is a critical need for precision neurotherapeutic technologies capable of targeting neural circuits at the cellular level across different brain regions. Such tools would open the door to innovative interventions that modulate or repair dysfunctional circuits, offering improved outcomes for patients affected by brain disorders.
Drugs remain one of the most powerful therapeutic tools, offering cell- and function-specific effects on neuronal populations, making them among the most targeted and adaptable forms of intervention. However, the challenge lies in delivering these drugs to specific brain regions with both spatial and temporal precision. Current invasive methods can achieve targeted delivery, but they can only deliver 1 set of cargo and come with significant side effects, limiting their use in treating brain diseases.
We’ve developed a FUS technology that can produce controlled transport of drugs across the blood-brain barrier (BBB). We showed that by using ultrashort ultrasound pulses (5 cycles) administered at a rapid rate, we can transport drugs across the BBB (Morse et al, Radiology 2019). We’ve shown that the transport occurs within 10 minutes of the ultrasound being turned off, after which, the BBB is closed. Furthermore, we observed no bleeding, no damage, and no histological difference between treated and untreated regions.
We will build on our progress by achieving greater temporal control of drug transport across the BBB and by introducing a new selection technology for triggering which drug is delivered. This would be the safest and most advanced noninvasive platform for delivering material in the brain, one that determines not only where material is delivered but when it is delivered; and one where you can also select which material is delivered to a specific place and time.
We will operate a rolling application process until we find the best student who accepts our offer.
This PhD Studentship is part of an Advanced Research + Invention Agency-funded project, subject to contract negotiations.
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