Dr Boubker Zaaimi is a lecturer in neuroscience at Aston University. He has more than 15 years of experience in implanting electrodes in animal models of stroke or epilepsy, from rodents to non-human primates. The aim of his research is to understand human brain activity and how it relates to behaviour, and to modulate this activity through different techniques. He has been part of multiple projects involving brain machine interfaces, including a project at Northwestern University in Chicago, where the research team attempted to provide sensations back to a primate by stimulating its brain, to the CANDO project in Newcastle University where the researchers developed a closed loop protocol to boost or suppress brain activity in animals. Using magnetoencephalography at Aston University Dr Zaaimi is developing this technique to record and modulate brain activity in humans.

Email: b.zaaimi@aston.ac.uk

2017-Now               Postdoctoral Fellow, Newcastle University; advisor: Prof. Andrew Jackson

• Part of the CANDO project. Successfully transfected optogenetic viruses in the primary motor cortex of macaque monkeys, rats and mice.
• Development in mice, rats, and primates of an optogenetic closed loop cancellation of epileptic seizures.
• Development of the wireless Rodent Control System to record and deliver optogenetic stimulation in rats.

2013 – 2017            Postdoctoral Fellow, Newcastle University; advisor: Prof. Stuart Baker

• Slice recordings from primate spinal cord (C3-C4)
• Chronic recording and stimulation in primate brainstem using multi-site linear electrodes (Uprobes Plexon).
• Contributed to development of wearable data loggers for macaques, capable of recording multiple channels of neurophysiological signals during natural animal behaviour in home cage.
• Successful industrial drug development collaboration with Autifony Therapeutics – preclinical validation in primates of a biomarker to detect drug-induced changes in cortical oscillations before implementation in clinical studies on patients.

2012 – 2013            Postdoctoral Fellow, City College, New York; advisor: Prof. Jack Martin

• Demonstrated contribution of sensory afferents in post-stroke spinal cord plasticity.
• Evaluated concomitant stimulation of descending and ascending inputs to spinal cord as a poststroke therapy.

2010 – 2012            Postdoctoral Fellow, Northwestern University, Chicago; advisor: Prof. Lee Miller

• Chronic recording and stimulation through multi-contacts arrays.
• Experience in brain machine interfaces and proprioception.
• Collaboration to DARPA’s funded multi-disciplinary project, with regular reports.

2007 - 2010             Postdoctoral Fellow, Newcastle University; advisor: Prof. Stuart Baker

• Developed a primate model of stroke using unilateral pyramidal lesions.
• Carried out intra- and extracellular recordings from cortex, brainstem, and spinal cord in a primate stroke model – work which is not currently done in any other centre.  A major publication in Brain.