The Neural Engineering Center (NEC) was established in 2007, and aims to meet the rehabilitation demands of various functional disorders, deficiencies, and neurodegenerations related to movement, sensation, cognition, and hearing, which are caused by the abnormal conditions and pathologies of neuromuscular and blood circulation systems. By using the emerging techniques and tools in the interdisciplinary fields of neural engineering, biomedical engineering, and informatics, NEC works on understanding the coupling mechanisms of neuromuscular and blood circulation activities, exploring the new theories and methods to enhance the repairmen and rehabilitation of dysfunctions of neuromuscular organs and systems, and developing the high-performance and innovative technologies, devices, and systems for the people with a lost and/or dysfunction of neuromuscular and neurovascular systems. Finally, the team would be pioneering a research field called as Neuro-Muscular Informatics and Engineering (NMIE). Currently, NEC focuses on the flexible sensing materials and flexible electronics, multimodal physiological-signals detection, motor and sensory reinnervation, modulation and stimulation of nerves, skeletal muscles and bones, as well as blood circulations, neural machine interface technology, and human-machine intelligent interaction. And we develop the multifunctional intelligent prostheses, rehabilitation and assistive robotics, neuromuscular-function enhancement and modulation systems, intelligent wearable devices, hearing detection and rehabilitation, and blood pressure modulation equipment.
Currently, NEC has a total of 99 people, including 8 full professors, 11 associate professors, 11 post-doctors, and 49 postgraduate students. Over the past 14 years, NEC has made the significant achievements in research funding and scientific outcomes. The team have been funded by more 200 research projects with a total of about 210 millions (RMB), including National Natural Science Foundation of China projects, 863 projects and 973 projects of the Ministry of Science and Technology, etc. Totally, 484 papers have been published and 346 patents have been filed and 78 invention patents have been already authorized.
