Postdoctoral Researcher

Postdoctoral Researcher
- Neurostimulation for Stroke Rehabilitation

100%, Singapore, fixed-term

The Singapore-ETH Centre was established in 2010 by ETH Zurich
- The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF), as part of the NRF’s CREATE campus. As ETH Zurich's only research centre outside of Switzerland, the centre has strengthened the research capacity of ETH Zurich to develop sustainable solutions to global challenges in Switzerland, Singapore and the surrounding regions.

Set in Asia, in a rapidly urbanising region, the Singapore-ETH Centre aims to provide practical solutions to some of the most pressing challenges on urban sustainability, resilience and health through its programmes: Future Cities Lab Global (FCL Global) and Future Health Technologies (FHT).

The centre serves as an intellectual hub for research, bringing together principal investigators and researchers from diverse disciplines and backgrounds. To promote the exchange of ideas and expertise, our researchers actively collaborate with universities and research institutes and engage with industry and government agencies to translate knowledge to practical solutions to real-world problems.

Project background

Stroke remains a leading cause of disability worldwide. Although improved early stroke response has reduced mortality, it has also produced a growing population of stroke survivors, intensifying the demand for long-term rehabilitation and placing a substantial clinical and economic burden on healthcare systems. Because today’s neurorehabilitation model relies heavily on resource-intensive, therapist-led care, meeting this demand will require scalable, cost-effective solutions that extend beyond the clinic and into the home. To address these needs, the first phase of the Future Health Technologies Programme (FHT1) at the Singapore-ETH Centre (SEC) (https://fht.ethz.ch) developed and piloted innovative upper limb rehabilitation technologies and evaluated them in clinical settings, both in hospital and in the homes of post-stroke subjects. Building on this foundation, FHT2 aims to scale up these technologies and carry out more extensive clinical evaluation, paving the way for technology-based clinic-to-home rehabilitation to be integrated into Singapore’s healthcare system.

Another limitation of conventional rehabilitation is that it rarely addresses the root cause of impairment directly: the injured brain and its motor and sensory pathways. Research has shown that rehabilitation can be made more efficient by using neurostimulation to drive specific patterns of brain activity, and one promising, scalable approach is transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS), which stimulates the auricular branch of the vagus nerve (VN) at the outer ear in a safe, non-invasive way. In close collaboration with the spin-off Skaaltec, the Rehabilitation Engineering Laboratory of ETH Zurich has developed SmartVNS (https://relab.ethz.ch/spin-off/skaaltec.html), a novel system for automated, movement-paired taVNS. SmartVNS pairs a wrist-worn motion tracker with a shoulder-worn stimulator over a wireless link: it autonomously processes arm-movement data and delivers taVNS through a custom-built earpiece electrode at precisely the right moments, promoting well-timed, short-term neuroplasticity.

Within FHT2, this project pursues three objectives: (i) to further explore the mechanistic effects of taVNS and optimise stimulation parameters and timing for maximal response in post-stroke subjects; (ii) to demonstrate the feasibility and clinical applicability of automated, movement-paired taVNS built on the SmartVNS system; and (iii) to investigate the clinical potential of taVNS as a rehabilitation intervention for stroke patients, first in a clinical environment during conventional therapy and later at home, in combination with robotic technologies developed within FHT2.

Job description

As a postdoctoral researcher, your work will focus on the clinical translation of SmartVNS (https://relab.ethz.ch/spin-off/skaaltec.html), an automated, movement-paired transcutaneous auricular vagus nerve stimulation (taVNS) system. Following a user-centred approach considering the needs and requirements of post-stroke subjects and input from clinicians, you will design and conduct feasibility studies of movement-paired taVNS across the continuum of neurorehabilitation care, in inpatient, outpatient and home settings, and investigate its mechanistic and therapeutic effects on upper limb motor recovery. The work will be performed in close collaboration with our research partners at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH).

Your tasks will include:

• Designing and conducting feasibility studies of movement-paired taVNS using the SmartVNS system across inpatient, outpatient and home-based neurorehabilitation setti