I am a biomedical engineer with a diverse background spanning neuroscience, digital signal processing, machine learning and embedded software development. I obtained my Ph.D. in Biomedical Signal Processing from the University of Freiburg, Germany, a M.Sc. in Electronic Implants from the University of Bern, Switzerland and a B.Sc. in Clinical Engineering from the Universidad Latina de Costa Rica. I started my professional career in 2009 as a clinical engineer in Costa Rica and shortly thereafter obtained the ESKAS excellence scholarship from the swiss government. After completing my Master's degree I worked for 3 years in Switzerland and Germany as an embedded software engineer, developing a wireless, energy self-sufficient, smart embedded system to monitor the frequency of hand-disinfections across hospitals and the correlation with nosocomial infections. After concluding this project, I moved to Freiburg to start my research career and focus on the processing of electrophysiological signals.
My research work focuses on the analysis of intracranial and scalp electro-encephalogram signals (EEG). I've gathered a vast experience developing software algorithms, GUIs, statistical analyses and data visualization using Python, MATLAB and C++. The software packages that I've developed are publicly available and provide a user-friendly front-end for neurologists to explore their hypotheses while relying on a back-end that runs state of the art signal-processing and machine-learning algorithms. I have personally used these tools to confirm or reject the epileptic nature of high-frequency-oscillations (HFO), a novel EEG biomarker; this was achieved by measuring the degree of temporal and spatial coincidence between HFO and established epileptic and physiologic neuronal events.
I have also conducted and published studies using the differentiated HFO to localize the epileptic focus, predict the occurrence of seizures, form connectivity networks, predict memory-deficits, analyse the efficacy of anti-epileptic medication and characterize cortico-cortical evoked potentials. I am currently a research associate at the University of Calgary working together with the group of Dr. Julia Jacobs to unravel the potential of scalp HFO as epilepsy biomarkers in paediatric patients.