David Hübner, PhD student at Dr Michael Tangermann’s Brain State Decoding Lab (Dept of Computer Science), received the Best Talk Award at the well-respected international Graz BCI conference on September 22. The 28-year-old mathematician was selected from over 30 high-caliber conference speakers.
In his talk „Mixing Two Unsupervised Estimators for Event-Related Potential Decoding: an Online Evaluation“ he presented a self-learning algorithm that decodes signals from an electroencephalogram (EEG) during a concentration task in real-time and transforms them into spelling commands on a monitor. Compared to former research in the field this method enables to correctly interpret brain signals from a random person without having to collect and classify data in a calibration round beforehand. This saves time and improves the usability of such a brain-machine-interface. The system could be employed, for instance, as a communication assistant for paralyzed patients.