Moder­a­tion

In the follow­ing lecture, Prof. Dr. George Malliaras, Head of the Bioelec­tron­ics Division (BEL) at the École des Mines de Saint-Étienne in France, explained the use of organic electron­ics to inter­face with the brain. The devel­op­ment of novel technolo­gies for the inter­fac­ing with the brain promises a better under­stand­ing of brain functions and thus a great advance in the diagno­sis and treat­ment of numer­ous patholo­gies such as Parkinson's disease or epilepsy. Thus, for example, George Malliaras has already success­fully worked to make the measure­ments of brain activ­i­ties non- or minimally invasive, while at the same time ensur­ing the highest accuracy in the local­iza­tion of the affected neurons.

Prof. Dr. Thomas Stieglitz, Profes­sor of Biomed­ical Microtech­nol­ogy at the Albert-Ludwigs-Univer­sity of Freiburg, subse­quently demon­strated the great poten­tial of polymer-based inter­faces to the nervous system. In his speech, he presented fields of appli­ca­tion such as intel­li­gent implants and "feeling" prosthe­ses. In addition, he explained the function of novel methods for lower­ing blood pressure, which instead of using drugs work with targeted electri­cal stimu­la­tions of the pressure sensors in the blood vessels. Thomas Stieglitz, however, also made it clear that the devel­op­ment of these promis­ing new technolo­gies simul­ta­ne­ously requires a discourse on ethical and societal conse­quences and is associ­ated with some challenges.

In the final discus­sion there was an excit­ing exchange with the audience, in which the previ­ously presented topics were further deepened and additional perspec­tives were illumi­nated. The numer­ous and very diverse questions of the audience empha­sized the relevance of the subject area and the great poten­tial but also unresolved issues in the use of organic electron­ics in medicine.

In order to foster the dialogue between science and society, the Hector Fellow Academy annually organizes a sympo­sium, which deals with the central questions of our time and bridges the gap between current research topics and societal challenges. The next sympo­sium of the Hector Fellow Academy will take place on July 19, 2018 in cooper­a­tion with the LMU Munich and the Max Planck Insti­tute for Quantum Optics on the topic "Quantum Science & Technology".

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