Fernando Rodriguez Plazas

Fernando joined the Unit as a D.Phil. student in 2020. He holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from ETH Zurich in Switzerland. During his studies, he was a research assistant at ETH Zurich’s Rehabilitation Engineering Laboratory where, in collaboration with the University Hospital Zurich’s Clinic of Neurology, he worked on combining movement data from wearables sensors with electrophysiological data (i.e. STN LFPs) to automatically assess disease state in people with Parkinson’s over long time scales. He has completed several internships in private industry and, in late 2019, he spent 6 at the Unit completing his Master’s Thesis under the supervision of Prof. Huiling Tan and Prof. Peter Brown.

During his D.Phil., supervised by Prof. Huiling Tan, he will be working on applying machine learning methodology to detect symptoms – especially those affecting speech in Parkinson’s disease – directly from LFP data, with the ultimate goal of developing more tailored and adaptive stimulation strategies for therapy.