Dr Romeo Racz, EngD
Romeo is a doctor of electrochemical engineering and member of the Royal Society of Biology. He leads the Cancer Neurotechnology Lab in the Brain-Tumour Research Centre of Excellence at the Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London. His work focuses on understanding the microenvironmental neurodynamics of brain tumours using advanced multimodal, massively scalable neural interfacing techniques enabling novel therapeutic avenues and research.
During his tenure at The Francis Crick Institute he has helped develop and validate in vivo large-scale electrophysiology methods, including the juxtacellular ultra-low impedance electrodes (jULIEs) and CHIME technologies, enabling the read-out and modulation of mammalian brain function with single cell resolution across brain regions. These contributions have expanded the experimental neurobiologists toolkit and enabled testing of innovative paradigms key in understanding of mammalian brain functions in health and disease. In 2021 established the Cancer Neurotechnology Lab Imperial Medicine with philantophic funding aimed at unlocking novel therapeutic avenues for brain tumours. Here he developed and validated the BAMBI (Brain Anomaly Management and Bi-directional Interface) system at the pre-clinical stage. BAMBI is the first functional neuroinvestigational device for intraoperative tumour margin detection, now in the pipeline for first-in-human trials.
He holds 3 granted patents covering deep-brain neural interfacing technology and novel methods for recording and modulation of neural ensembles intended to elicit a therapeutic effect. He has a broad network of academic, clinical, and industrial collaborators across the UK and the US.
Awarded the Francis Crick Institute Translational Fellowship twice and the a place in the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Therapeutic Accelerator and the Oncology Development Programme (ODP2) to formulate and further derisk the deep-tech proposition. He is also the co-founder of Metacognis, the first scientific data-science spin-off of The Francis Crick Institute providing AI-enabled discovery and knowledge management solutions for industrial innovators.
Balancing his professional and personal life, he is committed to innovate at the intersection of several disciplines and translate novel actionable insights into benefits for patient with drug-resistant brain diseases.