A/Prof Nicholas Opie is a biomedical engineer with experience in neural prostheses and co-head of the Vascular Bionics Laboratory. He completed his BE (Hons) and BSc undergraduate degrees at Monash University in 2007, his MBA at Melbourne Business School in 2018 and was awarded his PhD in 2012 for research developing a bionic eye.
He was employed as the Surgical Program Coordinator on Bionic Vision Australia's retinal prosthesis project, and was integral in development and preclinical validation of the technology designed to restore rudimentary vision to the profoundly blind. This device was implanted in three patients in 2012 with great success. In 2012, A/Prof Opie was awarded a $1.33M grant from US defence organization DARPA to develop a minimally invasive brain machine interface. This funding, and subsequent funding totaling more than $15.5M has enabled Dr Opie to establish and co-lead the Vascular Bionics Laboratory within the Department of Medicine at The University of Melbourne; a laboratory which has grown to support more than 35 graduate and undergraduate researchers. He is leading the research team conducting preclinical safety and efficacy trials on a device capable of recording neural information from within a blood vessel, which may enable direct brain control of wheelchairs, exoskeletons and computers to people with paralysis. Dr Opie is a Founding Director and CTO of Synchron, a company incorporated to translate endovascular bionic technology into clinical application.
Find out more about Nicholas Opie's experience
Nicholas Opie's highlights
FEATURED Journal article
Minimally invasive endovascular stent-electrode array for high-fidelity, chronic recordings of cortical neural activity
Read moreNicholas Opie's selected work
Projects
Displaying the 23 most recent projects by Nicholas Opie.
Project Types
17
Research Grant
4
Research Contracts
2
Internal Research Grant
Scholarly Works
Displaying the 41 most recent scholarly works by Nicholas Opie.
News
Displaying the 3 most recent news articles by Nicholas Opie.
Honours, Awards and Fellowships
3rd Place, Brain Computer Interface Award
1st Place, MedTech's Got Talent
NICTA Special Postgraduate Scholarship
Credentials
Positions
Associate Professor
Medicine - Royal Melbourne Hospital
Australasian Neuroscience Society (Ans)
Australasian Neuroscience Society (ANS)
Institute Of Electrical And Electronic Engineers (Ieee)
Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE)
American Association For Teh Advancement Of Science (Aaas)
American Association for teh Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Education
Master of Business Administration
Melbourne Business School
Doctorate of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
University of Melbourne
Bachelor of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering (Hons)
Monash University
Bachelor of Science
Monash University