Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher in ITN - Astrotech - Disruptive materials, technologies & approaches to unravel the role of Astrocytes in brain function and dysfunction: towards to Glial interfaces - 36 months position

A position is available for an Early Career Researcher in the ITN Astrotech (https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/956325, www.astrotechproject.eu) at the Institute for Microelectronic and Microsystems of the National Research Council (IMM-CNR) in Rome, Italy.

The European Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network ASTROTECH brings together 11 beneficiaries and 14 partners belonging to 9 European and Non-EU countries, including the participation of 5 partners from the private sector.

ASTROTECH mission is to create and develop the field of Glial Engineering, providing innovative tools to record, study, and manipulate astrocytes in the healthy and diseased brain. To this goal, the ASTROTECH network gathers all complementary expertise for engineering biomaterials, nanostructured interfaces and optoelectronic devices for stimulation, recording and biosensing of astrocytes, joint to computational approaches to describe and predict neuron-astrocytes interactions.

This will happen by giving 15 Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) exposure to a wide spectrum of expertise: state-of-the-art biomaterials interfaces, electronic, photonic devices will be combined with in depth knowledge on optogenetics, neuroscience, glial physiology and biology and computational methods to validate the developed tools in vitro, ex vivo, in silico and in pathological models of glioma, ischemia, epilepsy and depression.

CNR-IMM is co-coordinating the project ASTROTECH and has the scientific task of development of Glioelectronic devices for stimulation and read-out of astrocytes in vitro and in vivo The ESR project title will be “Design, fabrication and characterization of Glioelectronic devices for stimulation and read-out of astrocytes in vitro and in vivo”.

In particular, the goals of this activity are related to:

A) To grow and/or synthesize specific materials based on disordered inorganic nanostructures or hybrid materials to allow in vitro astrocytes growth and differentiation

B) To develop ultra-flexible Glioelectronc devices that record/stimulate selectively astrocytes.

C) To validate these devices in vitro and in animal model.

The candidate will participate to events organised by the network (workshops, summer schools, conferences, etc.) and carry out secondments to partner sites (both academic and industrial).

During the Project implementation, the candidate will be exposed to a multidisciplinary environment with merging excellence in competence and state-of the art infrastructure in Neuroscience, Biomaterials Science, Engineering, Chemistry, Physics both Academic and

Private sector. Complementary skills will be promoted by specific training sessions and defined in career development plan, shared with supervisors.