Podcast – Building Computers from Human Brain Cells

Voice Over:

Welcome to the NIHR Dementia Researcher Podcast, brought to you by dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk, in association with Alzheimer’s Research UK and Alzheimer’s Society, supporting early-career dementia researchers across the world.

Dr Sam Moxon:

Hello, and thank you for tuning into the Dementia Researcher Podcast. I’m Dr. Sam Moxon, a regular blogger for the Dementia Research website, and I’ve been given the reins for today’s episode. I’m not going to talk much about myself, because I want to get right into the discussion we’ve got planned with our guests today.

Dr Sam Moxon:

If you want to learn about me, you can find me on Twitter and also in our blogs once a month. So without further ado, I’d just like to get started and introduce Dr. Eric Hill at Aston University and Dr. Paul Roach of Loughborough University, and start by saying thanks to both of you for joining us, and I think the best question to start with is how are you both doing?

Dr Paul Roach:

Not too bad, cheers Sam. Yeah, it’s all right. It snowed, yeah, it snowed a little bit this morning and then it came down really heavy early on, about half an hour ago, so glad to be inside, but [crosstalk 00:01:02]-

Dr Sam Moxon:

After that sunshine. We’ve got sunshine up here. What’s it like down in Aston, Eric, is it …

Dr Eric Hill:

So yeah, we started off, it was a bit of sun, and then we had snow, a bit more sun, and then we’ve had snow again. So it’s about four or five degrees today.

Dr Sam Moxon:

Yeah, very British weather. Well, I thought the best place to start then would be by the pair of you giving a brief introduction to who you are, what you do, so that the listeners can get a grasp of the kind of research you do. So we’ll go in alphabetical order, easiest way. So Eric, do you want to start by giving everyone a brief overview of your work and how you’re involved in particular dementia research?

Dr Eric Hill:

Okay, so I’m a senior lecturer in stem cell biology and bioethics at Aston University, and my research really involves trying to model brain cell interactions of particular diseases like dementia. So we take stem cells such as induced pluripotent stem cells, which are stem cells that are generated mainly from skin cells, and we reprogram them back to a stem cell state.

Dr Eric Hill:

And then we use those to make different brain cell types, like neurons, astrocytes, microglia, to see how they interact in both health and normal development, but also when they start to become dysfunctional in disease states. And so that’s what my lab tries to do, to look at how these different cell types interact.

Dr Sam Moxon:

Yes, so very much one of, as far as I’m aware, one of the first labs to do that kind of induced pluripotent stem cell work, so really exciting stuff. And what about yourself, Paul? What does your lab focus on?

Dr Paul Roach:

So by training, I’m I guess a chemist, a synthetic organic chemist by background, a long time ago, and I moved into material science and did a lot of work on the surfaces of materials and they can control biology, so looking at protein absorption and how cells interact with material surfaces and so on. And then about 10-ish years ago, I started collaborating with other people that were looking at specialized cells, neuro [inaudible 00:02:52] cells and from primary source.

Dr Paul Roach:

So we’ve done quite a lot of work on using surface chemistry, topography, micro [inaudible 00:03:00] topography to control what cells do, i.e. do they attach and migrate in certain ways, do they differentiate in certain ways? And we do a lot of microfabrication in our labs, and microdevices, micro [inaudible 00:03:13] devices which can house cell populations and control how they connect with each other to form neuronal circuits.

Dr Sam Moxon:

Am I right in thinking as well you’ve had quite a lot of focus on Parkinson’s disease?

Dr Paul Roach:

Yeah, so some of our earlier work, so that’s one of the first areas that we looked on really, was Parkinson’s disease, because we were looking to try and recreate or trying to use the technology that we had in the lab, which is the micro fabrication technologies, and make it useful in the neural space. So my group was collaborating with all the groups looking at Parkinson’s disease, because it was quite a well mapped out circuit, neuro [inaudible 00:03:54] circuits.

Dr Paul Roach:

So we were able to recreate that type of circuit in the lab, which is quite complex. We had multiple different cell types within our device, cultured to allow them to connect in a very specific way, and then actually observe them maturing. And in terms of what the cell were doing, how active each population of cells were along that circuit to different places.

Dr Sam Moxon:

So you use the word “circuit” a lot, and that’s I guess the theme of the episode today. We want to talk about a research grant that you’ve both been recently awarded, quite an exciting grant to do with, as far as I’m aware, making neuronal circuits. So do you want to give an overview over the sort of things that you’ll be doing with this grant, where you’ve got the funding from, and where you aim to take it? So shall we start again with Eric first?

Dr Eric Hill:

Yeah, so I guess the grant was awarded from the European Commission, so it’s a future emergent technologies grant, and I think it was around about €3.5 million that we were awarded. And the grant is to build circuits out of neuronal cells, so to I guess work towards the idea of whether we can build, design circuits from living human neurons derived from stem cells that could process information and store information, and even perhaps learn.

Dr Eric Hill:

And so that’s the main theme of the grant, but to do that we have to work with lots of different types of people from different backgrounds, so bring the material science, the physiology, the stem cell biology, and the computing, and all of that together into one project.

Dr Sam Moxon:

So is that the expertise you would bring in then, Paul, the material science and designing the actual material systems to culture the cells on, to generate these circuits?

Dr Paul Roach:

Yeah, well, there’s quite a few different groups in this grant all across Europe, and a lot of the different skills overlap, which is really nice. So yeah, part of what we bring, my group bring to the table I guess, is the material, the construct design, and we’ve got other groups that look at the electrode bed for instance, and then we can measure the electrical activity in pseudo 3D over time as well. So yeah, our group can try and deliver that micro device, but overlap with other groups doing similar things really in terms of chemical patterning as well.

Dr Paul Roach:

So it is a very multidisciplinary project, and I’m very keen, I think we all are really, to try and learn lots. We’re kind of boys with toys really, so we like to do the stuff that we do, but we like to learn as well. And so I think this project really allows us to figure out where we can help out with the biological computing, but it also maps out onto other areas that we can really grow into other areas, like [inaudible 00:06:45].

Dr Sam Moxon:

So my follow-up question would be is it all about control, then? Trying to build neuronal networks where you can control which cells will connect to each other and will signal each other, and study how they interact with one another, and gain a better understanding of neuronal connectivity? Is that the overall goal of the project?

Dr Eric Hill:

So I think that’s part of it, and I think what’s really difficult is we need to work in three dimensions to create better cellular models, to replicate the tissues that we’re trying to understand. But there’s a real problem with trying to model tissues like the brain in 3D, because you lack control over how the circuits are produced, how the cells connect to each other. And cells often tend to connect in any old way that they like, and we can’t really often control that in 3D.

Dr Eric Hill:

What’s really interesting about organoid models as a model system where you have aggregates of cells and you let them develop under their own steam is that they seem to know what to do, and they get a better idea in their environment where they are, so they can start to form structures, but they’re still a bit random. And so if we combine the ability of the cells to know what to do, what to become and turn into with engineering technology is where we can control the way they connect, then we have a better system where we can make predictable networks using different types of materials.

Dr Sam Moxon:

Okay, so yeah, it’s quite an exciting topic. I mean, just from a personal perspective, I’m really interested in anything to do with 3D and neurons, and trying to control that connectivity. But the next question I have for you is how this idea came about in the first place, and what got the two of you talking to each other, and what mode you decide that you wanted to go in on this grant together?

Dr Paul Roach:

Oh, so I guess I’ll try and have a [inaudible 00:08:34], Eric. I think we invited Eric to do a talk, I think, and then we ended up chatting about the stuff that … Obviously, I’d seen the work that Eric does. This was some years ago now, and since then we’ve developed, been talking about what we can do together, and in our lab, we’ve made some devices where we actually very controlled, directed connectivity of sub-populations from one population to the next, using a structured micro channel, micro groove, which was kind of conical in shape.

Dr Paul Roach:

So Eric had done some work on triangles, so we often meet up virtually and have a chat about triangles, and how they can physically control [inaudible 00:09:17]. And it’s kind of gone from there really, so we’ve put in a few smaller grants which have gone by the wayside, but we’ve always continued to keep the conversation going. And then at the start of lockdown, bringing you right up to speed, I think at the start of the first lockdown, Eric got in touch with me, and I think Eric was pulling or Aston were pulling the team together, so we had quite a few different conversations about what we could do, which direction we could go in, and everything’s distilled down to what we eventually proposed in this area.

Dr Sam Moxon:

I think that touches on a nice point as well, which is the importance of keeping collaborations going, because you never know when it could lead to something like this. Now you’ve secured, like you’ve said, €3.5 million in funding, just from keeping that conversation going.

Dr Eric Hill:

I think, yeah, we’ve been trying, I guess, trying to find an excuse to work together for a while, and I think as Paul said, after I think I got invited to give a talk at Keele, I think it was then, and then Paul asked me to do a [inaudible 00:10:18] with one of his students, and ever since then we’ve been chatting about different ideas and ways in which it could work, sharing cells and looking at different materials. And eventually, this opportunity to work, I think the field is, the technology’s there to do some of these things that we’ve always wanted to do.

Dr Eric Hill:

And this was an opportunity, while there’s a great interest in biological computing, that actually we could pull different people together from different backgrounds to try and get something like this to work. So it’s been a long time in the making, I think, to get this idea to where it is, to get it funded. And I think as you say, it’s keeping those relationships going, and keep talking to people, and wait for the right opportunity to write grants together.

Dr Sam Moxon:

How did you find the process? Because obviously now, a lot of funding has been slashed because there’s still a lot of economic uncertainty surrounding how much money charities are going to be able to donate. I’m not sure whether you applied for this at the start of lockdown, like you were mentioning, but therefore perhaps some of this hadn’t caught up yet? But did you find it particularly competitive as a result of the situation we’re in?

Dr Eric Hill:

So I think there was a lot of stress at the time, because with Brexit, there was the uncertainty as to how the UK would be involved still in EU grants. And when we first started talking about this idea, I think one of our earliest meetings at Aston, it was the first meeting where we thought, “We’d better not shake hands,” because the pandemic was just starting to develop and it was starting to look a bit more serious, and so we had a very open plan meeting in an open plan office, no one shook hands.

Dr Eric Hill:

And that was kind of weird start to the grant, and it really was in full lockdown that we fully went into writing the grant. So Paul and I have laughed on a few occasions that it’s writing a grant together when there’s kids hanging off our shoulders, there was a parrot in the background in one meeting, background noises. And it was really writing the grant during that lockdown when we were trying to teach, swap everything to online learning, keep in touch with our students, our labs had shut down, and writing this grant.

Dr Eric Hill:

So it’s probably one of the most stressful times I’ve ever written a grant, but I think we also worked together a lot online, and I think that’s been really helpful with lockdown, is working online has made it so easy to have those conversations with people instantly in different countries, to bring this grant together.

Dr Eric Hill:

And so it really helps that we were switching to online communication a lot for many things, but this just was another great platform to work together. And I think with Paul 3D printing in the background, different things at different meetings with the COVID response, it was quite an interesting time to write a grant, during that period of the outbreak of COVID.

Dr Paul Roach:

Yeah, I remember that actually, I’d forgot. So I was 3D printing in my little office here. I’d bought some 3D printers for holding the masks on, the NHS workers, those little headbands, and here they are, [inaudible 00:12:55] printing, and obviously [inaudible 00:12:57].

Dr Sam Moxon:

Yeah, that’s the upside and downside of home working sometimes. Well, obviously, this is the Dementia Researcher Podcast, so I feel it’s almost my duty to get into a bit more detail on the applications of this, and potential applications for dementia research. So I’d like to go into that, and I guess what I’d like to stipulate is the fundamental basis with regards to using this to study dementia, trying to gain a better understanding of how neuronal networks become connected, and then by doing that, have a better idea of what happens when that connectivity is disrupted.

Dr Eric Hill:

I think the problem with studying the human brain is you don’t necessarily have a living human model to compare to that we can get to easily. We have animal models that we can compare to as maybe a gold standard, but we don’t really understand in real time how these networks develop. But we need to understand what a healthy network looks like and what it’s capable of before we can probably truly understand what happens to a disease. And I talk to my students all the time about changes and whether they’re biologically meaningful in cells, that you could have genes that are just regulated for proteins.

Dr Eric Hill:

But ultimately, is that biologically important? What happens to the function of the cell, is that more important? And I think the brain is a really good example of functionally when it goes wrong, it’s obvious that it’s gone wrong, and can we start to look at those functional change in the cells of patients that we’ve derived? But as a basis for that, we need to have a healthy model first.

Dr Sam Moxon:

Yeah, it’s really important, isn’t it? It’s that whole scientific, that age-old scientific principle of if you want to understand a disease, you first need to understand normality, so you can work out what’s going wrong. But it sounds like it’s a really interdisciplinary project as well. So obviously, the two of you come from different scientific backgrounds. How widespread is the discipline split on this, and how important do you think it is to have that interdisciplinary approach to this kind of research?

Dr Paul Roach:

I think everybody that’s on the team, I would say everybody’s got some sort of aspect that … I don’t think you could pigeonhole anybody, really, into one box. We have the conversation with guys, we have the stem cell knockout [inaudible 00:15:09], we’ve got the [inaudible 00:15:10] guys, materials. But I think like I’ve said before, I think everybody has that overlap of interest at least into another area. So it’s a really truly …

Dr Paul Roach:

Whether it’s a multidisciplinary or an interdisciplinary project, or probably a bit of both, and I think that really is the extent, I think we can really learn a lot from each other. And I think that as we [inaudible 00:15:33] grants and the plan is to have the grand kickoff, and I think hopefully this really is a seed for allowing other people around the world now, it’s a small world, to try and understand what technologies that we have and what we can do, and then other people can start to use that for their [inaudible 00:15:51].

Dr Paul Roach:

The stuff that we’re doing in my lab at the minute, we’ve always used primary cells. We’re now moving on to human cell lines to try and navigate around the problem of not having that humanized model, that we’ve kind of kept it in terms of brain cells, but we’re now starting to look at other cells, some embryonic cell lines for retinal work. So that, really, I’m not an expert on that, but it’s looking at what other people can do and figuring out actually where it’s useful. So for me, it’s looking over the wall of another discipline, figuring out how we can apply the technology that I’ve got. So I think it is a real [inaudible 00:16:27] to the proposal that we’ve got, such a diverse team.

Dr Eric Hill:

I think it’s really important there to have groups of people that are interested in other fields, and are willing to work and understand what the questions are, because you sometimes, you can have an answer to a question that doesn’t exist, but by talking to each other and listening to each other, it’s that willingness to understand what are the key areas of concern, how’s this going to fit together, what’s important for a neuron, and all of those things have to come together.

Dr Eric Hill:

And scientists who talk fundamentally different languages, and we’re an international collaboration, but also we have very different backgrounds, like theoretical physics, we have physiologists, we have molecular biologists, and people who work on artificial intelligence, actually building computer chips on this grant.

Dr Eric Hill:

And it’s getting everyone to understand what the whole processes and the biology, the mechanics, the engineering, and even the software have to go into it, so it’s bringing all those people together. So you have to have people that are interested in that to make these kind of things work, and so it’s great to work with people who are interdisciplinary already, I think, to bring their specialisms towards this project.

Dr Sam Moxon:

Yeah, I think, I mean, we ran a blog recently about the idea that you can find a career in dementia research from quite a lot of different disciplines. You just have to have that interest, and you’d be surprised how many different disciplines can get involved. And I think that was first highlighted to me at a day we actually, the three of us attended, and I think, Paul, you hosted at Loughborough, but we had all these different talks.

Dr Sam Moxon:

And I think it’s reflected in your grant, because I’m looking and seeing professor of mathematics for example, and you wouldn’t, as a biologist, necessarily think about the need for a professor of mathematics on a dementia research grant. But like I say, it all has a very important role to play. So I guess the next question is how far do you think this can go? Could this have a clinical perspective as well, or are you just trying to take the technology as far as you can?

Dr Eric Hill:

Well, I guess we’ll get to see within the lifetime of the grant how far we can take this. I think in terms of clinical applications, I really see stem cells finding root in drug discovery. So understand the mechanics of the disease when we can start to use patient cells, but really using these systems to test drugs against, and speeding up that whole clinical process that we can maybe cut some of the time it takes to develop a drug by doing lots of tests very rapidly on human cells, so we can detect those early hits.

Dr Eric Hill:

And I think if you’ve got a really good reproducible model system, then you can do that in terms of developing the drugs of diseases like dementia maybe much quicker than the amount of time it takes at the moment. So that’s perhaps where I see these being used clinically. Whereas, as a technology in itself, I think it will be really interesting to see what these neurons do when we can connect them together in these different circuits and what their capabilities are. But it’s always that issue that these are living brain cells that you need to feed, and look after, and nurture in the lab.

Dr Eric Hill:

They’re very hard to look after in a lab. We’ve grown them for two years in the lab, and that was kind of mind blowing, to keep them alive for that long. But to keep that inside some kind of device living for a long period of time, I think that’s going to be a real challenge with this project for the long-term applications. But I think we can learn a lot about how neurons connect to each other and what they’re capable of, but equally how computer chips are designed, and can we learn from how the neurons connect to each other to make better computer chips as well?

Dr Sam Moxon:

Yeah, okay. So you talked about human cells and building that into this model. There’s a sort of ethical swing taking place at the moment. Obviously, you’ve seen the rise of more people switching to vegetarian or completely plant-based diets and pushes to move away from animal testing wherever possible. Do you think that’s another important factor to play in this kind of research, is to try and develop better models to not necessarily completely eradicate the use of animals, but produce and …

Dr Sam Moxon:

Because you get a lot of issues where drugs that show promise in animal models, for example, fail clinical trials in humans, because it’s very hard to replicate that same process in an animal. So as we move towards that ethical and maybe scientific change, do you see models like this as having a big part to play in trying to improve on our pre-clinical models without the need for animal testing or as much animal testing?

Dr Paul Roach:

Certainly. I think when I’ve been funded for other types of grants from the Animal Free Research trust, we have a tendency to go to animal models or animal cell lines because we know that they’re fairly robust, they’ve been used for a long time, we know that they work for what they’re intended to, but they don’t replicate human tissue very well, or certainly in the neural [inaudible 00:21:10] they don’t. But we’ve been restricted, because we didn’t have the cell types to allow us to really investigate this human niche. And now with stem cell technologies coming through, we do.

Dr Paul Roach:

These technologies are really now coming on at a rapid pace, so we’ve now got lots of things coming together and we’re in at the right time to try and really make the most of that. So I think with some of the grants I’m involved with in animal-free research at the heart, have really tried very hard to move things really into human only, i.e. no supplements from animals, no tissue media, [inaudible 00:21:49], and so on. And it’s very, very difficult, and that in some respects can hinder the rapid progression into human models, because you do need those baby steps to get there.

Dr Paul Roach:

But I think we are now at the stage where we’ve got a very good cellular basis for human [inaudible 00:22:09] tissue, with supplements that are realistically human. And that’s my model perspective, and then when you go into a human tissue from patients, that also leads to that other avenue as well. So you actually have un-diseased and diseased models that can really be run side by side, giving you a really good look at both those situations.

Dr Eric Hill:

I think, yeah, the technology that allowed us to make these stem cells, so being able to take a skin cell and turn it back into a stem cell in itself removed an ethical barrier to working with cells that had that potential.

Dr Eric Hill:

So to do this kind of experiment before, people would’ve had to have used embryonic stem cells, which would’ve meant destroying an embryo, which some people would see as a potential life, to generate these embryonic cell lines, which you could then turn into neurons. Whereas, the fact that you can take a skin cell and turn it into a cell type with the same potential as an embryonic stem cell removes the need to use the embryonic stem cells in that way, and it also created the situation where we could take the cells from different patients with different diseases and then start to generate the stem cell lines and then neuronal lines from those patients, and start to compare.

Dr Eric Hill:

And then the fact that we can now make these different types of human neurons and disease models from different patients as well, means that for the first time we really do have human living brain cells that we can start to do experiments on. Because if you talk to people who do get to work with living human brain tissue, it’s very rare that they get it to work with. You might get it a couple of times a week if you’re lucky from patients that have had some form of brain surgery. And that would be the only time that you would’ve got to work with some living human brain tissue, which would be dying while you’re trying to work with it, and you might be lucky to keep it alive for maybe a few weeks or so.

Dr Eric Hill:

And so people have had to use animal models, because that was the only alternative, that you can’t just scoop bits of people’s brains out to work with, like you might with a tumor. You take a tumor out quite willingly from a patient from anywhere in their body, and you could work on it and test drugs against it, but not with the brain. So the brain is kind of locked away behind your skull, you need every bit of it, and so you would rarely get to work with it. And what you would get to work with it would be donated tissue, which has told us a huge amount about these different disease, but it’s postmortem tissue.

Dr Eric Hill:

It’s not alive, it’s the end stages of those disease processes that have maybe gone on for decades. Whereas now, these models have allowed us to work with the human system and see at the very earliest stages what goes wrong with them, so that we don’t necessarily have to use animals for those early stages. But I think we have to be careful with the questions we ask of those models, because they are very early stages. Even if I keep my cells alive in the lab for a year, they’re still a newborn or fetal neuron. They’re not a 65-year-old’s neuron, so we have to be careful about the questions we asked, and also careful if we use animal models, what questions we ask of those, because they don’t naturally develop dementia.

Dr Eric Hill:

So I think we just need to be more considerate of the models that we use, and what are their limitations, and how far can you push them? And not, I guess, to develop too many ideas from them, because if they’re not capable of fully replicating the disease, then maybe you need more than one model to help to develop a drug, and I think this is a step towards doing that.

Dr Sam Moxon:

Yeah, so it’s a case, trying to cover as many bases as possible. And I guess the advantage of something like this is, with an animal model, you’re looking at a whole organism, whereas here you can look at individual cell types and individual interactions, and I guess look for some of those early changes, because what seems to be key in treating dementia is the idea that prevention is better than cure. Because by the time someone gets diagnosed, it’s usually too late, whereas if you can unlock those early mechanisms, can you potentially prevent onset to some extent?

Dr Paul Roach:

In some early work that we did with Parkinson’s UK, the device that we had held I think five different cell types, and because of the structure of the device, the cells were connected in a very organized way, so there was populations of millions of cells connected to millions of cells in fibrous [inaudible 00:26:01]. But we were able to chemically turn different parts of that circuit off and look at how that effect affected the rest of the circuit upstream and downstream, with that chemical turning that population off.

Dr Paul Roach:

So this type of work really opened the flood gates, I guess, for people to really start to look at early, immature populations that can develop into a network, that start to really unpick some of the things, like Eric said, with Parkinson’s or other different disorders of the brain. So yeah, not only one population’s affected, which you’d have normally in drug discovery or disease progression, but actually look at multiple populations, and how they interact with each other and mature along with each other, and if disease is passed through from one population to the next, and so on.

Dr Sam Moxon:

Yeah, so before I go to my last question, I’m just going to attempt to summarize the project once more for the listeners, and feel free to jump in if you think anything needs adding. So ultimately, the idea is to generate stem cells from human skin cells to create induced pluripotent stem cells, and then push them onto different neural cell types, so say neurons, astrocytes, microglia, and interface those with microchips. And once they’re on the microchips, you can then build specific networks and stimulate them, and using computer modeling, see how they respond to that stimulus.

Dr Sam Moxon:

Is that a fair summary? Okay, I see you nodding, that’s good. So the question I have then, the final question is are you looking to recruit any new members, any new lab members for this project, and if so, what sort of things are you looking at? Because obviously, there’s a lot of researchers out there might be looking for their next adventure.

Dr Eric Hill:

Yeah, so at Aston we’re looking for a postdoc in between our labs to look at the physiological side, also the neurophysiology, as well as the stem cells and molecular biology of being able to manipulate the cells. But we’re also looking for a postdoc in terms of the computer work that we’re doing with the other partnership within Aston.

Dr Eric Hill:

So very two different types of postdocs there from different backgrounds, but yeah, we’d definitely look to someone who’s maybe a physiologist, who’s got experience of working with stem cells and molecular biology, or maybe a cellular molecular biologist who’s got experience with physiology. So really, again, that kind of multidisciplinary type person that would move into more than one field and have some interest and background in that.

Dr Paul Roach:

At Loughborough, we’re looking for a postdoc which will really take the reins on the micro [inaudible 00:28:41] devices, looking at chemical patterning as well, learn some things from Eric’s group and bring them back into our lab. So we’re looking for somebody that can juggle those things or at least have a very discrete skill in one area, and we can kind of train them up. It’s very difficult to try and get someone that fits everything, so training is given where we can.

Dr Paul Roach:

And we’re also looking for a part-time technician role to manage the lab on a day-to-day basis, and support the project from that way. And then there are other groups around, so Barcelona, they’re looking for one or two postdocs I think, I forget now the details. But there’ll be, yeah, all the parts of the collaboration on the ground, we’ll be looking for other team members to build in. So we’ll be launching the website in the next few months, which is neuchip.org, so that will come live shortly. And on there, we’ll advertise all the different posts in the consortium.

Dr Paul Roach:

I think one of the main things that we want is the strength at each of the sites to do discrete work package delivery, but there’ll be lots of collective chatter, again, to transfer the knowledge. And we’re looking for people that, whatever their main strength is, looking for people that can, are willing to listen across different disciplines, to really learn and push as one. And part of that will be, when we can, move around different labs and share skills, and promote the activities.

Dr Paul Roach:

We might be told we need a device that houses this many cells in this particular area where we’re working with [inaudible 00:30:24], looking at the electronics, and they’ll be saying, “Well, we can’t do that because of this constraint,” and so on. So it will be a very inter-networked type of working [inaudible 00:30:35] that will be discrete work packages within each group.

Dr Sam Moxon:

Great.

Dr Eric Hill:

I think with these type of projects, you often look for someone who’s really good at troubleshooting and is willing to try stuff, because you can’t just buy this off a shelf. You will have to build it, and so it’s that kind of scientist that I think would work really well with these kind of projects, is to be willing to try different things out and bring different disciplines together.

Dr Eric Hill:

I think this is an area that maybe science lacks at the moment, is truly interdisciplinary scientists who work in multiple areas and speak the languages of those areas well and fluently. And we need to move away from the idea that you’re either a biologist or an engineer. We need more people that can do both and do it well, so I’d like to see, that’s the kind of person we bring into this, and training them in these different areas as well.

Dr Sam Moxon:

Yeah, definitely agree on that last point. So the website is neuchip, so neuchip.org, when it’s live, and you’ll find the vacancies there.

Dr Paul Roach:

Yes, yeah.

Dr Sam Moxon:

And I think I can personally recommend Eric and Paul as people to work for as well. Knowing them personally, the kind of person you can work with and go to the pub with as well, which I think’s quite important, especially if you’re British, and we all love the pub. So I think with that then, it’s time to end the show and say thanks to the both of you for joining us.

Dr Sam Moxon:

Thanks to Eric and Paul, and if anyone’s interested in finding more about Eric or Paul, we should be including details of them in the website, so you’ll be able to find their Twitter accounts, provided that’s okay with them, and I’m sure they’re open to any questions you might have, any further questions about this project, like they said. And we’ve covered it, so a really exciting project. They are looking to recruit, and I think it would be a great project to be involved with. And just to end, I’d like to remind you all to like, subscribe on whatever app you’re using to listen to the podcast. Thank you all for listening, and we’ll see you all next time.

Voice Over:

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