EPSRC Open Fellowship awarded for brain stimulation research

Dr Joram van Rheede, Senior Postdoctoral Neuroengineer in the Brain Engineering Lab at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, has been awarded an EPSRC Open Fellowship from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The fellowship, worth nearly £2m will begin on 1 April 2026 and run for five years, supporting a research programme titled Towards brain state aware neuromodulation: a translational pipeline.

More than 200,000 people worldwide have already benefited from medical implants that electrically stimulate the brain to treat neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy – a therapy known as deep brain stimulation. Despite advances in intelligent technologies in other fields, most brain stimulation systems still deliver the same level of stimulation continuously, without adapting to the brain’s changing state. Even the most advanced devices rely on simplified measures of brain activity and typically operate based on data collected during waking hours alone.

Sleep, however, plays a vital role in brain health and neurological disease. It dramatically alters patterns of brain activity and may influence how the brain responds to stimulation, while some forms of deep brain stimulation can themselves disrupt sleep. Through the fellowship, Dr van Rheede will establish a research group at Oxford to develop sleep-aware deep brain stimulation systems that account for these changes.

Building on his previous work with Professor Timothy Denison’s Brain Engineering group at Oxford’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering, alongside Professor Andrew Sharott at the MRC Brain Network Dynamics Unit and international collaborators, the research programme will develop a wireless brain stimulation platform for 24/7 preclinical research and algorithms capable of detecting sleep and adapting therapy accordingly. The project will be carried out in collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University, UMC Utrecht in the Netherlands, and industry partners Amber Therapeutics and MintNeuro, helping to lay the groundwork for future clinical trials of sleep-aware neuromodulation therapies. 

Dr Joram van Rheede said: “Getting good sleep is key for brain health, and bad sleep is often a symptom of neurological conditions and can even drive their progression. Therefore, there is no excuse not to take sleep into account when developing brain stimulation therapy systems and algorithms. I am excited to start work on this project as it will provide a pathway for smart, sleep-aware therapies to reach patients.” 

His recent research on the interaction between deep brain stimulation and the sleep–wake cycle has been published in leading journals, including Translational Psychiatry and npj Parkinson’s Disease, as well as in recent preprint work. He is also actively involved in public engagement, recently presenting the topic in a Spotlight on Engineering talk introducing audiences to the challenges and opportunities of engineering next-generation brain therapies.