Bioengineering of neuronal circuits
Another research branch is to reverse engineer functional human neuronal circuits from scratch. We plan to generate the basic parts, namely electrically active neurons, from adult human stem cells. Next, we need to understand and control the biology to connect these cells in a reproducible way into defined functional neuronal circuits. These functional human cellular testbeds, will also help to reduce animal experimentation. From an engineering point of view, we aim to create biological computers using living cells to compute signals as our brain does with extreme efficiency. The Volkswagen Foundation generously funds this project.