PBL - 14

What an eventful day! Today, i had my group's final presentation rehearsals for both PBL1 and PBL2.

Yixiang wanted PBL2 presenters to practice first as the final presentation is tomorrow. We had a blast from our side. Ni Jun gave an excellent introduction to the heart valve design. Oh boy! he improved a lot over the semester. He really can articulate his ideas now. Also, I finally resolved the mystery of who between the Swiss duo is presenting for PBL2.

When it was the turn for PBL1, Yixiang seemed patchy and unprepared for his part. He couldn't kick off well and was stammering most of the time. I chipped in between, and showed him a sample of how to present the introduction. Everyone agreed that Yixiang should present along my lines. Yixiang humored us by imitating my style and voice of presentation. Although it was quite funny, we suggested him to have his own way of presentation.

Olvier gave the conclusion for PBL1 highlighting the advantages and limitations of the ImagineMove system.

Thank God, everything turned out fine. Just 2 more days, and then we will be done with PBL.

Yippie, i had a fun time this sem doing PBLs. Hope others in my group and rest of the class had fun too. I learnt lot of things about MMIs and heart valves. Man, if i had any say, i would recommend that most of the graduate courses should incorporate the PBL component.

I had fun blogging all this while. Hope others can appreciate and learn something about PBLs from my blog.

For world peace, i prayeth. Happy blogging!

PBL - 13

As PBL1 is almost going on auto-pilot mode, and as i am just involved in the back-stage, nothing much has been contributed from my side over the past 10 days.

I sent the intro slides to Yixiang last sat (22nd). I commented a lot in each slide for his benefit. Wonder if he is okay with that.

To satisfy my own curiosity and thirst for knowledge,I spent the last two monday evenings (17th and today) in med library watching videos on upper limb nerve and mucle physiology. Tried to rope in Ni Jun to watch the videos with me, but he seemed disinterested as he is not presenting as well.

We are having our group presentation rehearsals for both PBL1 and PBL2 tomorrow. I am yet to mirror-practice for my PBL2 part. Hope everything turns out fine. This is the last week for PBLs.

PBL - 12

Busy busy week researching on heart valves. Had an interesting PBL meeting with Dr Leo.

Back to PBL1, had meeting today with Yixiang, Lei Yang, and Ni Jun. Yixiang volunteered to do the introduction. I had no problem with that. Everyone else agreed as well.

We spent half-an-hour trying to understand what the feedback component is doing in the system. None of us we clear about it. I wonderful if it really can be that useful. Yixiang came up with a 4-digit binary code system to control the feedback. I wonder if that's what the Swiss duo think about how the feedback works in ImaginMove.

We decided a few things on what content should be included in Yixiang's presentation. He wanted me to send him a few intro slides (which i did for the 3rd PBL meeting with Prof Yu), wanted Lei Yang to send a few slides on Freehand. He wanted animation/videos of hand flexion/extensions. Ni Jun showed him the animations which i gave to Ni Jun on last last monday (3rd oct). I suggested that i will ask Prof Peter Lee if he has some biomechanics or physiology videos of hand grasping.

As i am not presenting for PBL1, i recommended that those who are not presenting for PBL1 should present for PBL2 so that no one is left out. Ni Jun didn't like the idea, but he had to agree to it finally. Lei Yang was also ok with the idea.

So, it is decided that Yixiang and Zhang Liang will present for PBL1. Ni Jun, Lei Yang and myself will present for PBL2. I wonder who between the Swiss duo will present for PBL1 and PBL2.

PBL - 11

After the last meeting with Prof Yu (the one on 28th Sep), Ni Jun looked very depressed. He told me that he is giving up, he won't do any work, and he doesn't care any more. I was surprised at his attitude, then calmed down myself and tried to analyse his situation. I wanted to motivate him. So, i fixed up a meeting with him on monday (3rd oct). On monday, both of us met in med library. I borrowed some physiology animation CDs from the library, showed him what we can do, how we can follow Prof Yu's suggestions,...He himself searched a lot of sites, downloaded many ppts on arm physiology, but he was finding it difficult to assimilate all the stuff. After i showed him the animations and suggested him how we can proceed, he seemed to have gotten motivated. He said that he will give it one more shot and try to do something about it. I am happy that he got some drive.

After that eventful monday session, i spent the rest of the week till now working on PBL2.

Anyways, I had my group meeting today in the afternoon to discuss about both PBL1 and PBL2. The agenda for todays'meeting was to discuss about the format of the final presentation for PBL1 on 28th October. After some serious debate of how many speakers and who will be the speakers, how many minutes for each speaker,..., we came up with the following decision -

PBL1 Final Presentation:
(i) 3 parts –
Intro+Physiology+Freehand, (7-8 mts)
BCI, and (3-4 mts)
Feedback+limitations+conclusion (6-8 mts)
(ii) First part speaker to be decided among Lei Yang, Ni Jun, Yixiang and Kalyan;
Second part speaker is Zhan Liang
Third part speaker to be decided between Ludovic and
Olivier
(iii) Practice presentation on 25th October, 1400hrs to 1600rs.

Lei Yang, Ni Jun, Yixiang and myself decided to meet next thursday (13th Oct) to select the speaker for the 1st part, and finalize on what to present.

I spent rest of the afternoon with Ludovic and Olivier brainstoring for novel mechanical heart valve designs.

Today for the first time i felt that Yixiang was not too happy to allow me to give the introduction for the project. I am happy that he is taking active interest to contribute in the project.

Hey, its saturday tomorrow, party time. Happy weekend bloggers!

PBL - 10

I finally managed to upload the slides yesterday nite.

Prof Yu came late today as usual. He was more communicative today compared to the previous two sessions, gave a lot of feedback, lot of learning issues and praised other groups for their effort. He told us to buck up, refine our presentations, and do a lot of homework.

Others liked my introduction, Ludovic gave me some suggestions. I guess Ni Jun was the scapegoat for the meeting. He got lot of learning issues. Although he does his homework well, he cannot articulate it, that's where he loses out.

Overall suggestion for the group was to know our work thorougly well, and not put anything on the slides we don't understand.

After the meeting, Yixiang asked me if he can join Ni Jun and myself to work on the arm physiology part as his BCI part is almost done. Even Ludovic suggested that we work more on this part as Ni Jun is finding it difficult to manage it alone.

Now that all PBL meetings with Prof Yu are over, we have to prepare for the final presentation on 4th Nov or 28th Oct.

We have to start working on PBL2, it's about heart valves, hope it is fun as well.

Good nite, sweet dreams, happy blogging.

PBL - 09

Wow, i am blogging after more than 10 days.

Let me recall what i did over the past 10 days
1. Met Dr Mohan (from Surgery) to ask about the arm physiology. He was kind enuf to explain in nutshell about the flexor and extensor muscles, their correspoding nerves, and how they coordinate. Ni Jun was also present in this meeting.
2. Met Dr Sanjiv (Stroke specialist, NUH), he explained everything ranging from how paralysis starts, different kind of plegia, what happens in brain, spinal cord, what physiology is affected due to paralysis,...He was willing to give a ppt to the whole group (after i requested). But unfortuntely, he is going home from Deepavali, so have to wait till he comes back.
3. Spent a few hours daily in med library searching for relevant info on upper limb physiology.
4. Met the group on friday (23rd)to update each other, and decide on how to present for the 3rd meeting with Prof Yu. Everone recommended me to give the introduction. So i guess i will introduce the system, need for the system, and current technology in the market; Also i think will give an overview of the different components of the system. I have to do the conclusion as well.


Today, i meet Lei Yang in the canteen, discussed about PBL. We came up with a name for our system - ImagineMove. I would credit both Lei Yang and myself for this name. Hope others like it.

I am yet to finalize my slides for the wednesday meeting. Tonite is the submission deadline. Oh boy, this PBL is taking too much of my time, have a paper to submit for the conference, have no idea how i am gonna manage time.

PBL - 08

Met Ni Jun before the meeting to find out what he did overnite. Seems he managed to read up on the basics on mucle and nerve physiology. Complements well with my work.

Had an eventful second meeting with Prof Hanry, got a lot of learning issues. Ni Jun and myself are supposed to find out about the muscle and nerve physiology involved in grasping function (all 5 digits if possible. I think we narrowed down the problem definition to using BCI to control a neuroprosthetic arm to enable hand grasping function in the patient. Yixiang titled the problem as BCI controlled artificial limb.

After the meeting, had a little chat with Prof Yu on what actually PBL is, how the group is coping with the different kind of teamtask, what my opinions are about PBL,...Oh yeah, we also talked about GPBE, GSC and the new regime changes and stuff.

PBL - 07

Had meeting with the group in CRC level 3 Kitchenette (the BN5104 lecture got cancelled). Ni Jun and Yixiang seemed to have overlooked the last meeting minutes, prepared on retinal implants, wanted the group to work on that. Rest of the group disagreed, had a debate, finally decided to work on BCI controlled neuroprosthetic arm.

Group thought of 4 sections for the neuroprosthetic device. I chose to learn about the physiology of the arm, what goes wrong in the arm of a paralytic patient, and how different muscles and nerves coordinate in the arm. Surprisingly, Ni Jun wanted to join me for this part.

Went to the library in the evening, borrowed the Martini book, and got bewildered by the medical jargon. Somehow managed to find that there are 4 major nerves in the hand, innervating more than 20 muscles. I guess i will just share this with others tomorrow in the meeting. Wonder what Ni Jun did.

Met Lei Yang in her lab in after 2000+. She showed me some lecture notes of JHU on spine motor system. She thinks it would be useful to her to explain how her freehand works. I asked her to upload the document into the IVLE community workbin. Later, she confided in me that she doesn't like PBL very much, as it is consuming her time from research. I could empathise with her.

Am too tired now, want to write a lot. Adios for now.

PBL - 06

Went to Alberto's lab to check out his group's progree.
Alberto was kind enuf to share some of his papers.
Two of the papers struck me very much - one was about Graz group's work on neuroprosthesis controlled by a BCI and the other was about a 5 year old commercial neuroprosthesis arm. I borrowed the two papers from him, uploaded in the IVLE, mailed the rest of the group to have a look at the papers.

PBL - 05

Meeting with Prof Hanry started on time as we happened to meet him in the elevator. After a few minutes of battle with his iMac, we finally got started. After Lei Yang's overall introduction to MMIs, Hanry advised us to come up with a problem before the end of the meeting. I am not sure about others, but i got a bit nervous as we had not thought of a problem to work on. Olivier showed us a video on Graz's BCI research. Surprisingly, Hanry stayed silent during the presentations so far, without asking any questions. "may be this is how a PBL session is conducted, where the tutor doesn't ask questions" During Zhan Liang's presentation, an interesting question fueled the first discussion of the day. None of us were clear whether the EEG signal is obtained prior to the activity or during the activity. So, Hanry suggested the query to be the learning issue for the week. I don't know if Hanry knew the answer, but he asked us to find it out ourselves. "I guess in PBL, the tutor's role is to facilitate discussions, and not to provide answers" I wrapped up the BCI portion of the MMI sharing with others what Singapore and Germany have achieved so far in the BCI field. Hanry still refrained from asking questions. Ludovic introduced NPs to us. He explained to us how Deep Brain Simulator works - It doesn't cure Parkinson's disease but rather just prevents it; DBS uses Titanium invasive electrodes and gold wires; DBS has a 70% success rate. It was followed by Ni Jun's presentation on the two types of retinal implants. Yi Xiang elucidated on his findings on cochlear implants, thus completing our group's introductory presentations on MMIs.

We were left with only 10 minutes to go before we could start discussing about the problem/issue. I initiated the proceedings suggesting that we may work on developing a thought controlled neuroprosthetic device that can help the quadriplegic patients to walk. I proposed this problem because the group has people who have had background in BCI before. So, by tapping into their skills it would be easier to come up with a novel solution to the problem in hand. Zhan Liang seconded my idea. Ludovic proposed on working on an NP that can boost memory. Olivier wanted to develop an NP that can cure Alzheimer's diease. Yi Xiang suggested we should work on a device that can stimulate the muscle activity directly (something like the one shown in the movie Matrix). Hanry chipped into our discussion, saying that suppose 7 of us form a company and want to work on a project funded by Bill Gates. Then which project would we choose? It doesn't necessarily have to be revolutionary and novel, even a cocktail can make an impact if properly designed. So after a bit of deliberation (lasting few minutes if i am not wrong), we all decided to work on a BCI controlled neuroprosthetic arm. Everyone decided to search on this topic and update others on their findings.

Thus our first session with Hanry came to an end. But as usual i was not satisfied with the outcome of the meeting. We should have spent more time to come up with a problem, discuss about the loopholes in the current knowledge/applications, areas of improvement, issues in the relevant areas, etc... What if someone has already come up with such a BCI controlled limb device? What can we do then? Improve upon it? or Give up the idea and choose something else. I think we should have discussed all this. Anyway, we have a topic atleast to work on. Let us see how it shapes up.

PBL - 04

Past two days have been really busy. I spent the whole of monday afternoon and evening mentally and physically preparing the ppt for tuesday's meeting. As my research work was to focus on Singapore and Germany, i thought i would be able to make my slides in a jiffy. But i guess jiffy meant more than 6hrs for me. I did not know that i2r has achieved so much in so little time. It was hard to dig up their relavent articles written for general audience. Their technical stuff is way beyond my engineering background. So i stuck up to the basics. Regarding Germany, the Tubingen group has achieved tremendous success with their Thought Translation Device. Then why do they have very few articles in English to boast about their success? Beats me. I literally had to scorch for information in the web to prepare slides on the TTD. After some hard search, I retired for the day without completing my slides. The next day, i was preparing the rest of the slides (the Muller's group mainly) while i was doing my TA duties. Thank God, the students were not asking too many questions in the practical.

The meeting started with a few setbacks. We had to switch rooms midway during Lei Yang's introductory presentation. The Swiss duo wanted to leave early (1700hrs) and so were Lei Yang and Zhang Lei (meeting and lecture). So, we had to hasten our presentations. Yixiang was visibly upset at this, but he managed to control his temper durng the meeting. Lei Yang took the initiative to come up with introductory slides (i don't remembering anyone volunteering to prepare the introductory slides in the last meeting). Olivier also prepared some slides, but he was more technical compared to Lei Yang. So, all of us decided that Lei Yang is more suitable to be the first speaker. Olivier was more obscure in his presentation, skimming thru' most of the slides. He failed to present indepth information about the BCI research in Cananda and Europe. He just gave a bird's eye view of the info. I couldn't make out anything of what Zhan Liang presented about U Michi's research work except for the fact that they were using invasive electrodes to obtain ECoG and not EEG to control their BCI.Ludovic was not ready with his final slides yet, so his presentation seemed no better. After the duo left, Ni Jun gave a patchy presentation (although his slides indicated lot of effort put in by him) about the retinal implants. Lei Yang also seemed lost. Funny incident, Lei Yang SMSes me from across the room asking whether i can follow Ni Jun's presentation. She could have asked Ni Jun to stop and explain properly. But neither she did nor me. Is it an indication that "The group is not working as a team." Then i talked about my stuff for more than 20 mts. Later Yixiang suggested that i can reduce the length of my presentation as the slides were comprehensive enough. Yixiang went last(only Ni Jun and myself were in the audience), gave a lot of info on Cochlear implants. Later on, over dinner Yixiang expressed his upset about the Swiss duo's attitude towards the project and the meeting. He said that as they did not do their own work properly, they should not complain about other's work. "Do i see ripples in the group? Such upset demons are not good for a working group." I calmed him down saying that they may not be used to the way Asian's work. We have to adapt to work with others so as to build a cohesive and effective team, and not allow such minor incidents to affect the team's work. It is also my first time to work with non-Asians on a school project. I hope we can work together.

Later in the evening, I came to know that Zhan Liang took the initiative to set up an IVLE community group. I am really glad that my group members are showing active interest to work on the project. So, does it indicate that we can work as a team and not just a group?

Reflections from the past two days -
(a) As i took the initiative to be the group facilitator, is it my responsibility to make sure no ripples arise among the group members? If we can't work as a team, the whole point of working in groups for the PBL is diluted.
(b) Can i do something to improve the presentation skills of some of my group members?
(c) We never got to the point of discussing on the shortcomings of the current research work, problems coming out of it, probable solutions to the issues...Waht are we going to tell Prof Yu? We did not come up with any problem. Why did it happen? Was no one interested to discuss? Was there a time mis-management? How could we have avoided this? Should we have followed a different approach to present our findings to save time?

Tomorrow is the group's first meeting with Prof Yu. I seem overly concerned about the meeting. Let's see what happens tomorrow? Till then, happy blogging!

PBL - 03

The past 2 days, post-exams, were spent on finding more about MMIs. I asked Zhang Xin, Vinayak and Alberto about what their groups are doing regarding the problem. Zhang Xin said that not much progress has been done in her group, although they also decided to divide the group into BCI and NP respectively to manage things easily. Vinayak did not elaborate on his group's updates. Wonder what's so secretive? Alberto elucidated a lot about his group findings. As the problem statement expects us to come up with a novel NP device at the end of the day, Alberto said that about 6 people in his group are researching on different NP devices - liver, kidney, eye, ear, ...His approach to NP is that the NP devices act as substitute for the actual nerves. When the nerves no longer function to handle an organ, the NP devices simulate that function. They might not necessarily direct the nerves to activate. They can actually work for the neurons. Alberto is focusing on BCI though.

Today, i searched PubMed to retrieve articles on the latest work in the BCI area. A paper in Stroke journal has a small review on the latest BMIs and BCIs. I have to read that one. Also, i borrowed some books and journal articles from the library to know more about PBL. Wish to read up on PBL over the weekend. I might start working on the ppt on monday.

PBL - 02

I started working on the problem just 3 hours before the 2nd meeting. As i did some literature review in BCI for Dr Sada during my college days, i thought i can manage to pull something for the meeting. But i could not remember most of the stuff, so i had to go back to the basics - search in Google. After an hour of futile search, i went into the university web pages and tried to get some info from there - EPFL, Tubingen, i2r, .... I compiled all the relevant stuff into a 2 page word document, hoping that would be sufficient for today's meeting. I also found out that the June 2004 issue of IEEE transactions in Biomedical Engineering was focused on BCIs. I rushed to the central library to borrow the book, and get some ideas. But unfortunately, the issue was placed in closed stacks section, and as a result i could not retrieve it immediately.

All said and done, i set ahead for the meeting. I was not satisfied with my preparation for the meeting. I lacked an agenda of how the meeting would go about. I thought may be everyone would present their findings, the group would critic each other's work, and action would be taken accordingly. When all 6 of us met (Linbo decided to join gp 4 as they were in short of members and Yixiang could not attend due to some pressing engagement), after the usual hi's and hello's, i asked everyone if they were ready to share their findings with others and state the problems they found out in their respective fields. Zhan Liang started, focused on the signal processing aspect, and mentioned couple of issues in that area. I asked a few questions to clear my understanding. I was dominating most of the proceedings so far. Lei Yang seemed to dislike the way the meeting was heading. So she suggested a 4 step model to work on the problem. Ludovic suggested another approach. Olivier, Ni Jun and Zhan Liang did not express their concerns. So, I came up with a hybrid of the two models and we resumed. Olivier did a lot of research, brought a ppt with him on his findings, shared with us about the diff. research groups in the BCI area. He also showed us some videos. I shared what Singapore is doing on BCI, showed them the i2r BCI homepage. Ludovic commented that his lab mate works in the i2r BCI project. So, we decided to make an appointment with the relevant ppl in i2r as soon as possible. We decided that the BCI group should focus on the different research groups and find the relevant materials. Ni Jun gave a brief overview about NP and discussed a few problems in this area. Ni Jun was to the point, concise and presented all the relevant stuff without extra annotations. I liked his way of presenting. Ludovic took over from Ni Jun, talked about the different NP devices - ear, eye, brain,...Like Olivier, he also made a ppt of his findings. I learnt a lot of new stuff about NP today. The group decided that the 3 members in NP should work on respective devices.

Agenda for the next meeting is - everyone gives a 15 minute presentation about his/her findings. We meet on 6th September after the class. I volunteered to book the relevant room. I also volunteered to send the minutes of the meeting for everyone's benefit. As Ludovic and Olivier were going to Shangai this week for conference, they said that they would try to bring relevant stuff about BCI and NP from the conference.

Personally, lessons i learnt today were
(a) Be prepared for the meeting
(b) Have an agenda in hand
(c) Do not dominate over the proceedings. Ask for others' opinions
(d) Always be alert, never know when you might have to come up with hybrid solutions to tackle the problem.
(e) Maximize the effectiveness from the group. Never settle for less when we can achieve for more (like today we decided to meet the the i2r guys, invite them to share their expertise to our group or to the whole class. We could have just dropped the idea altogether if we were lazy to work).

PBL - 01

Before the 1st meeting with my group on 22nd August, on 21st august i invited Lei Yang, Yixiang, Robin and Zhang Xin to join the group. I wanted to work in a diverse group this semester. As the two Swiss guys were already part of group 1, i joined that group hoping it would be a new learning experience for me to work with Europeans. I wanted a mix of engineers and non-engineers in my group. But group 1 ended up having 7 engineers and 1 biologist (who is passionate about engineering).

The 1st meeting was quite interesting. I asked my fellow group members during the class if it is ok for them to stay back after the lecture so that we can have a get to know each other session. As ususal, i took the initiative to introduce the group members to each other. During their self introductions, I came to know that Lei Yang has some experience in BCI, Yixiang knew what an NP is, and Olivier and Ludovic were also aware of some MMIs. After some non-trivial discussion on MMIs, we decided to divide the group of 8 into 4 each for BCI and NP. The Swiss duo wanted to stay in the same sub-group but later decided to join BCI and NP respectively. Ni Jun and Zhan Liang were almost silent thru' the whole meeting. Next meeting is on 29th August at 1600hrs outside LT7A.