Hi, I'm Maurice, a BCI researcher and the head of Cognitive Assistants BCI-Lab at DFKI.
My research is concerned with the development of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) in real-world application.
This includes interfaces, which can be controlled via brain signals actively, measure the reaction to an external stimulus, or adapt to a user's mental state in a passive manner.
I am working as a senior researcher at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) in Saarbrücken at the Cognitive Assistants department where I am heading the Cognitive Assistance BCI-Lab.
The Cognitive Assistants BCI-Lab is concerned with developing BCIs for out-of-the-lab use, from aviation and automotive scenarios, over health and well-being up to industrial use cases.
News
February 2025 - We will be hosting a session again with colleagues from Mittweida University of Applied Sciences at the 2025 MetroXRAINE conference. Deadline for paper submissions soon (March 15th), submit your papers here.
January 2025 - Had a great time giving a lecture at "Kinderuni" with Prof. Krüger teaching school kids about the basics of BCIs (video on YouTube)
December 2024 - Our paper on transfer learning from overt to covert speech got accepted at ICASSP 2025
September 2024 - Gave a course at IDESSAI 2024 together with Fabien Lotte and Marc Tabie on variabilities in brain activity and their impact on BCIs
September 2024 - Our paper on BCI-based elevator control got accepted at UCAml 2024
June 2024 - 2 papers accepted at the 2024 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON Metrology for eXtended Reality, Artificial Intelligence and Neural Engineering, we will present our work on gamified training paradigms for imagined speech BCIs and cross-user startle detection in pilots on the flight deck.
May 2024 - 2 papers accepted at the 5th International Neuroergonomics Conference, we will present our work on electrode reduction for imagined speech BCIs and tailoring takeover requests in autonomous driving to mental workload
April 2024 - Workshop on BCI-Variability accepted at Graz BCI conference! Come and join us to learn about the NEARBY project and discuss with us about BCI variability.
March 2024 - Short paper "Speech Imagery BCI Training Using Game with a Purpose" accepted for publication at AVI 2024
December 2023 - Sucessfully kicked off project NEARBY! Within the next 3 years we will be researching on variability in brain activity and their influence on BCI performance together with Inria Bordeaux and DFKI Bremen (Link).
November 2023 - State Secretary Oliver Luksic visits our BCI-Lab to hand over funding decision for our Franco-German project NEARBY (Link)
Some insights into my work
One of my first BCI demonstrators: BrainLamp
A Muse Headband measures brain activity which is used to control a light bulb.
Improving intent recognition in human robot collaborations by brain activity. Core topic of the EXPECT project.
On stage at VivaTech 2023 in Paris with Fabien Lotte from Inria promoting our work on noise-and variability-free BCIs for out-of-the-lab-use.
Picture by Andreas Scheppers, Copyright: DFKI
Using AR and multimodal input (speech & gestures) to teach a robot a pick and place task.
Selected projects
Project EXPECT - Exploring the potential of pervasive embedded Brain Reading - is concerned with the development of an adaptive, self-learning platform for human-robot interaction, with a focus on integrating brain activity into the collaboration of humans and robots.
The goal of project BISON was to develop and evaluate an interaction concept for neurosurgical microscopes based on BCIs.
In project HAIKU we want to develop AI-based digital assistants to improve aviation safety in many various use cases concerning different stakeholders in aviation, e.g. pilots, air traffic controllers, etc.
Selected publications
Feick, M., Regitz, K. P., Tang, A., Jungbluth, T., Rekrut, M., & Krüger, A. (2023, March). Investigating Noticeable Hand Redirection in Virtual Reality using Physiological and Interaction Data. In 2023 IEEE Conference Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR) (pp. 194-204). IEEE.
Rekrut, M., Selim, A. M., & Krüger, A. (2022, October). Improving Silent Speech BCI Training Procedures Through Transfer from Overt to Silent Speech. In 2022 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC) (pp. 2650-2656). IEEE.
Peitek, N., Bergum, A., Rekrut, M., Mucke, J., Nadig, M., Parnin, C., ... & Apel, S. (2022, November). Correlates of programmer efficacy and their link to experience: a combined EEG and eye-tracking study. In Proceedings of the 30th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (pp. 120-131).
M. Rekrut, M. Sharma, M. Schmitt, J. Alexandersson and A. Krüger (2021). Decoding Semantic Categories from EEG Activity in Silent Speech Imagination Tasks. In 9th International Winter Conference on Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) (pp. 1-7) doi: 10.1109/BCI51272.2021.9385357.
Rekrut, M., Jungbluth, T., Alexandersson, J., & Krüger, A. (2021, April). Spinning Icons: Introducing a Novel SSVEP-BCI Paradigm Based on Rotation. In 26th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (pp. 234-243).
Rekrut, M., Sharma, M., Schmitt, M., Alexandersson, J., & Krüger, A. (2020, February). Decoding semantic categories from eeg activity in object-based decision tasks. In 2020 8th International Winter Conference on Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) (pp. 1-7). IEEE.
Selected videos
A tour through our former lab and some of our demonstrators.
Me talking about BCIs at the science slam with Esa astronaut Matthias Maurer (Starting at 43:00).
One of my early works on a speech controlled smartkitchen. Note the hat! :)