Kaare Mikkelsen

Kaare Mikkelsen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Faculty of Technical Sciences, Aarhus University, specializing in biomedical engineering with a focus on ear-EEG technology for sleep and auditory neuroscience applications.

His research pioneers non-invasive monitoring systems using ear-centered EEG sensors, developing machine learning frameworks for automatic sleep staging and auditory attention decoding. Key contributions include personalized sleep scoring algorithms that adapt to individual physiological variations and deep learning models for decoding brain responses to natural speech, enabling applications in hearing assistance and brain-computer interfaces.

Recent publications (2022-2025) demonstrate a cohesive research trajectory centered on overcoming real-world challenges in wearable EEG: improving long-term reliability through electrode configuration studies, developing standardized data pipelines, and validating ear-EEG against clinical polysomnography. His work bridges engineering innovation with clinical sleep medicine, emphasizing at-home deployment and user-specific adaptation.

Dr. Mikkelsen leads significant research projects including:

• Event based attention detection (2021-2024)
• Ear-EEG sleep monitoring (2015-present)

His work receives funding from Danish research councils and involves collaborations with clinical partners for validation studies in naturalistic settings.

As part of Aarhus University's Biomedical Engineering group, he utilizes advanced laboratories for sensor development and signal processing, contributing to the department's strategic focus on healthcare technology innovation.