OLIMPIA · TRAINING NETWORK ON ORGANIC OPTOELECTRONICS INTEGRATED WITH LIVING SYSTEMS FOR NEUROSCIENCE INVESTIGATIONS AND APPLICATIONS

OLIMPIA is a training network initiative built on research and development of innovative organic optoelectronic devices interfaced and integrated with living systems. The living systems of choice are neural cells (glia and neuron) that will be interfaced and integrated in vitro and in vivo with different organic electronic and optoelectronic devices (such as OLED, OFET/OLET, OECT, OPD). The major objective of OLIMPIA is to establish an innovative training program aimed at enabling and supporting the development of a novel supradisciplinary field that combines the worlds of organic optoelectronics and of neuroscience. Novel tools based on organic optoelectronic devices will be engineered and developed to stimulate and to record neuron bioelectrical activity, such as neuron excitability and membrane polarization, as well as to modulate cell proliferation and neurite outgrowth. The OLIMPIA research will provide radically new understanding of neural cell-cell communication processes and will impact a wide variety of fields, from biomedical research to neuro-regenerative medicine. The OLIMPIA consortium is both interdisciplinary and intersectorial. It includes key European players with long standing and internationally recognized research tradition in the field of organic electronics and optoelectronics, organic synthesis as well as neural cell biology and neurophysiology and, as such, is uniquely qualified to implement this ambitious supradisciplinary training program. Moreover, the consortium combines 10 partners belonging to 6 European countries from academia, public research centers and industrial labs thereby offering an exciting and broad training landscape to the new generation of researchers.""