Responsabilités et mission
Rod O’Connor is Full Professor at the Department of Bioelectronics at the Centre Microélectronique de Provence. He received a B.Sc. (Hons) and M.Sc. in Neuroscience from Laurentian University in Canada. His doctoral research was carried out at the University of Cambridge, where he received a Ph.D. for his work investigating the influence of pulsed microwaves on neurons and cell physiology. Thereafter, he held a Marie Curie fellowship at the European Laboratory for Nonlinear Spectroscopy (LENS) in Florence, Italy, applying multiphoton microscopy for in vivo imaging and femtosecond laser manipulation of the brain. He carried out postdoctoral training in electrophysiology and optogenetics at the HHMI Janelia Research Campus, VA, Boston University and Woods Hole, MA, USA. Before moving to BEL, he held a Labex Excellence Chair in Bioengineering at the XLIM Research Institute in Limoges, where he developed devices and applied advanced optical imaging tools to study the effects of ultrashort, intense pulsed electric fields on cancer in vitro and in vivo. He received his habilitation (HDR) in 2016. His research at BEL centers on the development of new neurotechnologies using organic electronic materials for interfacing with the brain, sensing and treating cancer (‘Oncoelectronics’). He is interested in the bioelectrical basis of disease and combining Bioelectronics, Bioelectrics and Neurophotonics approaches. He is an author of over 65 publications with an h-index of 21, according to Google scholar (2021).