Philip P Vu

Background

About Philip P Vu

I am a neural engineer with 8 years of experience studying regenerative peripheral nerve interfaces to restore fine motor prosthetic hand control for people who have suffered from major-upper-limb amputations. Over these years, I had the opportunity to translate my preclinical research to human clinical trials under an investigational device exemption. Particularly, I investigated the efficacy of implanted bipolar electrodes to extract efferent motor signals from free skeletal muscle grafts reinnervated by residual nerves. I found that (1) these reinnervated free skeletal muscle grafts start to physically contract during mirrored finger movements and (2) electromyography (EMG) signals can be extracted from these grafts to provide intuitive two degree-of-freedom thumb control on a prosthetic device. More recently, I have shown that the muscle grafts remain stable over years producing reliable EMG signals, which would provide users with long-term prosthetic control without the need for recalibration. Overall, I have accumulated a strong technical background developing real-time Kalman filters and hidden Markov models, analyzing electromyography signals using decomposition algorithms (ICA, PCA), and effectively communicating my scientific findings through manuscripts and oral presentations.