Bionic mannequins, dancing avatars and a robot arm captivated the public at Campus Biotech

The Wyss Center team was kept busy through the night as more than 5000 visitors enjoyed activities and demonstrations at Campus Biotech as part of La Nuit des Musées, Geneve 2017. Along with CISA, the Blue Brain Project and the Campus Biotech Human Neuroscience Platform, the Wyss Center opened its doors on Saturday 20 May to show and explain neurotechnology research.

Wyss Center robotic expert and staff engineer, Dr Martina Coscia, helped people control a little robot arm with a wave of their hand. Meanwhile in L’Humain Connecté exhibition visitors met an avatar that followed their every move and watched short movies on thought-controlled prostheses and the use of neurofeedback to help reduce tinnitus.

Children enjoyed putting together a giant floor skeleton and real transparent MRI scan puzzles while demos helped them to understand what it might be like to have impaired vision, hearing or touch.

Wyss Center Assistant Director Dr Tracy Laabs said “La Nuit des Musées 2017 was a fantastic opportunity for us to treat the public to a behind-the-scenes look at Wyss Center neuroscience and neurotechnology in action. We showed them neurotech devices that are helping people with nervous system disorders today and explained what we want to make possible in the future. We hope they enjoyed the evening as much as we did!”

Once visitors had experienced the research going on at Campus Biotech, they drew their visions of what neurotechnology could hold in store for us on the huge ideas wall.

The exhibition highlighted the collaboration of the Wyss Center with EPFL while a giant spinning brain display featured the Wyss Center’s work on accelerating the development of new brain probes with hepia and a University of Geneva collaboration on whether external brain stimulation could help people with dyslexia.

“La Nuit des Musées 2017 was a fantastic opportunity for us to treat the public to a behind-the-scenes look at Wyss Center neuroscience and neurotechnology in action. We showed them neurotech devices that are helping people with nervous system disorders today and explained what we want to make possible in the future. We hope they enjoyed the evening as much as we did!”

Dr Tracy Laabs
Assistant Director