Neuroengineering at UC Davis

Welcome to the UC Davis Center for Neuroengineering & Medicine!

Repair - Restore - Augment Human Capacity to Benefit Society

About Neuroengineering at UC Davis

UC Davis is one of few universities in the nation that houses a College of Engineering, School of Medicine, School of Veterinary Medicine, Neuroscience programs (including the Neuroscience Graduate Program, the Center for Neuroscience, the Center for Mind & Brain, and the M.I.N.D. Institute), as well as a National Primate Research Center (one of only seven centers supported by NIH nationwide).

Mission: Promotes neurological health and extends human capacity through neuroengineering, to benefit society. Conduct research, education, and stakeholder engagement, from discovery to translation of systems that interface with the brain and the body.

NeuralStorm Training Program

The Center for Neuroengineering and Medicine leads the NeuralStorm training program. Fellowships and activities are funded by the NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) program and philanthropic donations.

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News Bites - 2025

2025.07.17 Sheela Toprani, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Neurology and Neurosurgery was selected as a 2025 AES Early Career Fellowship Awardee by the American Epilepsy Society. Dr. Toprani was thus recognized as a rising star in epilepsy research for her work on patient-specific state-maps of brain network epileptogenicity. Congratulations, Dr. Toprani!
2025.07.08 Postdoctoral fellow Nicholas Card, Ph.D., is a recipient of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund 2025 Career Awards at the Scientific Interface (CASI)! This prestigious award supports early career researchers at the intersection of biology and the physical, computational and mathematical sciences. Each awardee will receive $560,000 over a five-year period to help bridge their transition from postdoctoral training to independent faculty roles. Learn more about the award here. Congratulations, Dr. Card!
2025.07.01 Mark Fedyk, PhD was promoted to Professor. Congratulations, Dr. Fedyk!
2025.07.01 Gene Gurkoff, PhD was promoted to Professor. Congratulations, Dr. Gurkoff!
2025.07.01 Jonathon Schofield, PhD was promoted to Associate Professor. Congratulations, Dr. Schofield!
2025.03.27 Jonathon Schofield, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, served as a panelist at the Exploratorium’s After Dark Series in San Francisco. In addition to Dr. Schofield, the "Open Question: Health Tech” panel included faculty Gözde Göncü-Berk (researcher, designer, and educator leading the WearLab), Katia Vega (associate professor of design leading the Interactive Organisms Lab), and Alyssa Weakley (clinical neuropsychologist and assistant professor of neurology). Technology made health more quantifiable and trackable, but does it actually improve our well-being? This panel discussion explored the intersection of technology, fitness, and happiness. A recording of this event is available at this link. “Open Question” is part of the After Dark Thursday Nights series at the Exploratorium and is organized in partnership with UC Davis Grand Challenges.
2025.01.23 Zhoadan Kong, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, served as a panelist at the Exploratorium’s After Dark Series in San Francisco. In addition to Dr. Kong, the "Open Question: Artificial Intuition" panel included UC Davis faculty Joe Dumit (co-lead of the Center for AI and Experimental Futures), Christina Harvey (director of the Biologically Informed Research and Design BIRD Lab), and Tanuja Mishra (assistant professor of design). As AI seems to be a disruptor right now, panelists discussed different ways to align machines with our social and natural values, from care-based AI to biomimicry. A recording of the event is available at this link. “Open Question” is part of the After Dark Thursday Nights series at the Exploratorium and is organized in partnership with UC Davis Grand Challenges.

News Bites - 2024

2024.11.19 Hyoyoung Jeong, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, was inducted as a 2024-25 Hellman Fellow. His funded project is “Closed-Loop Wireless System for Autonomous Seizure Monitoring and Mitigation”. Congratulations!
2024.7.24 Tyler Singer-Clark, PhD student in the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Group, in the Neuroprosthetics Lab led by David Brandman, MD, PhD and Sergey Stavisky, PhD, is attending the "Methods in Computational Neuroscience" course offered by the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. The course introduces students to the computational and mathematical techniques that are used to address how the brain solves problems at levels of neural organization ranging from single membrane channels to operations of the entire brain.
2024.6.25 Lee Miller, PhD, Professor in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior and director of the Speech Neuroengineering and Cybernetics Lab at UC Davis is the PI of a new STAIR Grant award from the Venture Catalyst program at the Office of Research. Drs. Sergey Stavisky, David Brandman, and Peter Belafsky are co-investigators on the project titled "Restoring Speech Communication with an Adaptive Biosignal Decoder-Synthesizer". The award is $70k for one year. Congratulations to Dr. Miller and his collaborators!
2024.5.6 Jonathon Schofield, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and member of the Steering Committee of the Center for Neuroengineering and Medicine, was awarded a NSF CAREER grant for the project titled: "CAREER: An Integrated Sense of Movement to Promote the Control and Embodiment of Prostheses for Children with Congenital Limb Deficiencies". The award is for $688,823 over 5 years. Congratulations!
2024.4.30 NeuralStorm, a UC Davis Neuroengineering Education & Training Program, announced felllowship awards to its third cohort of graduate students. NeuralStorm is a research training program offered by the Center for Neuroengineering and Medicine at UC Davis, funded by an NSF NRT grant (NSF Award #2152260) and philanthropic gifts, including the Ellis/Linton Fund for the Center for Neuroengineering and Medicine. We congratulate the new NeuralStorm Fellows:
- Aparna Srinivasa, PhD student in the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Group. Major professor: Sergey Stavisky, PhD
- Aya Akhmetzhanova, PhD student in the Neuroscience Graduate Group. Major professors: Timothy Hanks, PhD and Rishidev Chaudhuri, PhD
- Weiqing Hu, PhD student in the Psychology Graduate Program. Major professor: Xiaomo Chen, PhD
- Danny Lasky, PhD student in the Neuroscience Graduate Group. Major professor: Nigel Pedersen, MBBS, FAES, FANA
- Testaverde Sangwoo Kim, PhD student in the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Group. Major professor: Erkin Şeker, PhD
- Anamar Flores, PhD student in the Neuroscience Graduate Group. Major professor: Jie Zheng, PhD
- Harshavardhana Gowda, PhD student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Graduate Program. Major professor: Lee Miller, PhD
2024.4.30 Jessica Korte, biomedical engineering graduate student whose major professors are Wilsaan Joiner, PhD and Audrey Fan, PhD, is first author on a recently published paper in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, titled "Neural Underpinnings of Learning in Dementia Populations: A Review of Motor Learning Studies Combined with Neuroimaging".
2024.4.28 A number of graduate and undergraduate students affiliated with the Center for Neuroengineering and Medicine volunteered at the second annual 2024 California Neurotechnology Conference organized by the Neurotech@Davis student club in Davis, CA. We thank the following students who presented demos and talked with the audience of students and scientists from multiple UC campuses and USC about neuroengineering research and education programs: Saeedeh Komijani, Vraj Thakkar, Hayley Kumagai, Peyton Young, Josh McGinnis, Kihun Hong, and Layla Semaan.
2024.4.22 Ada Kanapskyte, biomedical engineering graduate student in professor Sanjay Joshi's RASCAL Laboratory (Robotics - Autonomous Systems - Controls - Neuroscience - Medicine) passed her qualifying exam and is now a PhD candidate. She was also awarded a highly competitive summer internship with Accenture Labs in San Francisco.
2024.4.20 Graduate and undergraduate students affiliated with the Center for Neuroengineering and Medicine volunteered at Picnic Day. We thank the following students for presenting engaging demos and activities to diverse audiences of attendees, from young to young-at-heart: Eden Winslow, Vraj Thakkar, Giancarlo Sagastume, Josh Siegel, Jacob Roshgadol, Chilly Gavrilov, Josh McGinnis, Kihun Hong, Peyton Young, and Selene Han.
2024.3.13 Peyton Young and Kihun Hong, graduate students in professor Jonathon Schofield's BEAR Lab (Bionic Engineering and Assistive Robotics Laboratory), passed their qualifying exams and are now PhD candidates. Congratulations!
2024.2.21 Jack Lin, MD was interviewed by CBS News, Sacramento: New epilepsy monitoring unit at UC Davis specializes in diagnosing and treating seizures. Dr. Lin is Professor of Neurology and Vice Chair, Strategy and Planning in the Department of Neurology, as well as Section Chief, Epilepsy, Sleep & Neurodiagnostics, and Director of the UC Davis Comprehensive Epilepsy Program.
2024.2.9 Jack Lin, MD was interviewed by KCRA 3 News: UC Davis medical expert discusses new ways to diagnose seizures. Dr. Lin is Professor of Neurology and Vice Chair, Strategy and Planning in the Department of Neurology, as well as Section Chief, Epilepsy, Sleep & Neurodiagnostics, and Director of the UC Davis Comprehensive Epilepsy Program.

News Bites - 2023

2023.11.27 The School of Medicine Office of Research (SOMOR) awarded three $15,000 matching grants to departments to host symposia through a new initiative, the School of Medicine Impact Symposia Awards. Dr. Amy Brooks-Kayal, Chair of the Department of Neurology, and Dr. Kia Shahlaie, Chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery, have been awarded funding to develop an innovative joint symposium on sleep and cognition, "UC Davis SOM Connection Symposium: Sleep-Wake and Cognition - A Light in the Dark for Neurological Disorders".
2023.10.16 Professor Lin Tian, PhD was appointed as the third Scientific Director of the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience (MPFI). She will continue as a clinical professor at UC Davis in addition to her role at MPFI. Dr. Tian's lab has a new website, launched in January 2024. Congratulations prof. Tian!
2023.10.01 Assistant professor Jonathon Schofield, PhD and his collaborators received a UC Noyce Initiative award for the project titled "Transforming the Accessibility of Bionic Prosthetic Limbs by Leveraging Modern Computational Approaches and the Emerging Standard of Amputation Surgery". This is a 2-year grant, for $290,795 direct costs. Professor Wilsaan Joiner, PhD, and UC Davis Health surgeons Clifford Pereira, MD and Andrew Li, MD are coinvestigators on this award. Congratulations to the team!!
2023.09.01 Professor Lee Miller, PhD was awarded a 2-year research gift of $110,000 by Accenture, for the project titled "Restoring Speech Communication with a Multimodal Decoder-Synthesizer". With generous support and collaboration of Accenture, the team led by professor Miller is developing a device that enables fluent, own-voice speech production using only "silent speech" gestures. The UC Davis team includes PhD students Harsha Gowda (ECE) and Naresh Kaushal (CS), postdoc Daniel Comstock, and Dr. Peter Belafsky. Adolfo Ramirez-Aristizabal, PhD is the Lead Collaborator from Accenture Labs.
2023.08.30 Professor Carolynn Patten, PhD was awarded a Pilot Translational and Clinical Studies Program grant ($50,000) by the UC Davis Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC, see newsletter link here). Her project is titled "Investigating Individual Differences in the Capacity for Walking Recovery Among Stroke Survivors". Dr. Patten is developing a biomarker signature to predict recovery of walking function, and rehabilitation potential in stroke survivors.
2023.08.22 Professor Karen Moxon, PhD and her collaborators received an award for their NSF grant proposal titled "NCS-FO: Understanding the Computations the Brain Performs During Choice" (NSF Integrative Strategies for Understanding Neural and Cognitive Systems NCS Program). The grant is for $1,000,000 over three years. Prof. Moxon is the principal investigator. Professors Xin Liu, PhD, Zhaodan Kong, PhD, and Ignacio Saez, PhD (Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) are co-principal investigators. Congratulations to all!
2023.08.04 Assistant professor Christina Kim, PhD was selected as a finalist for the Science & PINS prize for Neuromodulation for her essay about her work using light + calcium integrators. Her essay was published in Science: http://tinyurl.com/4fuh46w7. Congratulations!
2023.08.01 Assistant professor Jonathon Schofield, PhD and his collaborators received an award for their NSF grant proposal titled "A Cognition-based Model for More Forgiving Human-Machine Interactions through Embodied Cooperation" (NSF M3X Program). The grant is for $901,102 over three years. Prof. Schofield is the principal investigator; Paul Marasco, PhD (Cleveland Clinic) and Jacob Segil, PhD (University of Colorado Bolder) are coinvestigators. Congratulations to all!
2023.06.14 Assistant professor Christina Kim, PhD was selected to receive the 2023 Beckman Young Investigator Award from the Beckman Foundation. The award offers $600,000 in funding over four years. Congratulations!
2023.06.08 Assistant professor Sergey Stavisky, PhD and postdoctoral fellow Maitreyee Wairagkar, PhD attended the BCI Society Meeting in Brussels. Dr. Wairagkar presented a poster and a talk on continuous speech synthesis from intracortical neural activity in a person with anarthria due to ALS.
2023.05.31 Dr. Daril Brown, postdoctoral fellow in the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab led by Drs. David Brandman and Sergey Stavisky, is the recipient of the 2023 Postdoctoral Diversity Enrichment Program award from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. Congratulations!
2023.05.31 Tyler Singer-Clark, graduate student in the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Group and member of the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab led by Drs. David Brandman and Sergey Stavisky, was selected as an ARCS Foundation Scholar. Congratulations Tyler!
2023.05.30 Yufei David Zhu, graduate student in the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Group and member of the Functional Advanced Neuroimaging Lab led by Dr. Audrey Fan, was accepted into the UC Davis CTSC TL1 Training Program. He will leverage his biomedical engineer expertise to work closely with clinicians and elucidate the biological underpinnings of schizophrenia. Congratulations David!
2023.05.22 The NeuralStorm program announced felllowship awards to its second cohort of graduate students. NeuralStorm is a research training program offered by the Center for Neuroengineering and Medicine at UC Davis, funded by an NSF NRT grant (NSF Award #2152260) and philanthropic gifts. We congratulate the new NeuralStorm Fellows:
- Eden Winslow, PhD student in the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Group. Major professor: Jonathon Schofield, PhD
- Tyler Singer-Clark, PhD student in the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Group. Major professor: Sergey Stavisky, PhD
- Kendall Stewart, PhD student in the Neuroscience Graduate Group. Major professor: Timothy Hanks, PhD
- Orhan Soyuhos, PhD student in the Psychology Graduate Program. Major professor: Xiaomo Chen, PhD
2023.05.19 Assistant professor Sergey Stavisky, PhD was named a Searle Scholar. This award supports Dr. Stavisky's research in understanding and restoring speech production through cellular-resolution measurements of neural ensemble dynamics. Each scholar receives $300,000 in flexible funding to support his/her/their work over the next three years. Congratulations!
2023.05.15 Eden Winslow, graduate student in the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Group and member of the Bionic Engineering and Assistive Robotics (BEAR) laboratory led by assistant professor Jonathon Schofield, PhD, made a fantastic video outlining her work and presented it at the UC Davis Biomedical Engineering Symposium. The title is: "Improving prosthetic technology for children with upper limb loss". Here is the link!
2023.05.03 Dr. Daril Brown, postdoctoral fellow in the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab led by Drs. David Brandman and Sergey Stavisky, was selected as a Schmidt Fellow. The Schmidt Fellows is the inaugural program of Schmidt Futures, whose mission is to find and connect talented people to solve our world's hardest problems. Congratulations Dr. Brown!
2023.04.29 Professor Karen Moxon, PhD and Dr. Daril Brown, postdoctoral fellow in the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab led by Drs. David Brandman and Sergey Stavisky, attended the first-ever California Neurotehnology Conference at UCLA. Dr. Moxon gave the keynote talk and Dr. Brown served on a panel. The Neurotech@Davis student club was one of the organizers, along with neurotech student clubs from UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, UC San Diego, and UC Berkeley.
2023.04.25 Professor Wilsaan Joiner, PhD and assistant professor Jonathon Schofield, PhD, together with colleagues in the multi-disciplinary team called Prosthesis Embodiment Through Intuitive Technology (PETIT), participated in the "Celebrating our Limb Loss Heroes and Communities" event organized by UC Davis Health. More information about this event is available at this link.
2023.04.25 Assistant professor Sergey Stavisky, PhD was selected as one of the winners of the inaugural MIND (Maximizing Innovation in Neuroscience Discovery) Prize. Dr. Stavisky's project provides a novel path to treating and improving the quality of life of those with neurodegenerative diseases through the development of next-generation brain-computer interfaces to restore human brain function. Congratulations!
2023.04.20 Assistant professor Roy Ben-Shalom, PhD is among ten scientists selected to receive a 2022 Individual Biomedical Research Award from The Hartwell Foundation. Ben-Shalom will receive $100,000 per year for three years, for his work on predicting the excitability of brain neuronal circuits in neurodevelopmental conditions. More information is available at this link. Congratulations!
2023.04.15 Students from multiple labs affiliated with the Center for Neuroengineering & Medicine exhibited at Picnic Day 2023, under the "Neuroengineering and You" umbrella title. They shared with the public examples of neuroengineering applications, through demos and posters.
2023.03.21 Assistant professor Alan Martin, MD, PhD, who is an Associate Program Director in the Department of Neurological Surgery and an affiliated faculty with our center, received the Best Paper 2022 award fromthe Global Spine Journal. Congratulations!
2023.03.20 Dr. Nicholas Card, postdoctoral fellow in the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab led by Drs. David Brandman and Sergey Stavisky, was selected as a recipient of the A. P. Giannini Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and Leadership award. Congratulations!
2023.03.18 Multiple labs affiliated with the Center for Neuroengineering & Medicine exhibited at NeuroFest 2023. Professor and Center Co-Director Karen Moxon, PhD presented "The Relationship Between AI, Machine Learning, and Brain Health" (recording available here). Assistant professor of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, and Mathematics Rishidev Chaudhuri, PhD who is affiliated with our center, presented "Cracking the Neural Code With Machine Learning" (recording available at this link).
2023.03.08 Professor Wilsaan Joiner, PhD was a speaker at the CAMPOS Colloquium, with a talk on "Assessing Motor Control Capabilities in Children with Congenital Upper-limb Differences".
2023.02.01 Assistant professor Sergey Stavisky, PhD (PI) and his lab were awarded a Seed Grant from the ALS Association for a project titled “A brain-computer interface for restoring speech in people with ALS”. Assistant professor David Brandman, MD, PhD, FRCSC as co-PI and postdoctoral scholar Maitreyee Wairagkar, PhD serve as key personnel for the 1-year, $50,000 grant. Congratulations to the team!
2023.01.26 Dr. Maitreyee Wairagkar, postdoctoral fellow in the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab led by Drs. David Brandman and Sergey Stavisky, was conferred the India UK Achievers Honours in the category of Science and Innovation, and was selected as one of the "75 at 75" brilliant and inspiring achievers. Congratulations!
2023.01.17 Assistant professor Christina Kim, PhD and her collaborator Antonio Fernandez-Ruiz at Cornell University have won a 2022 Scialog Collaborative Innovation Award for their work on "Bridging Mechanism of Memory Across Levels". Congratulations!

News Bites - 2022

2022.12.13 - Professor Lee Miller (Lead PI ) and collaborators Drs. Daniel Cates (UC Davis Health) and Ahmed Arif (UC Merced) received a 2022 Seed Award from the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute (CITRIS) at the University of California (UC). Their research project is titled "Restoring speech communication with a multimodal decoder-synthesizer". This is a 1-year project for approximately $60,000. Congratulations to prof. Miller and his collaborators!
2022.12.13 - Professor Zhaodan Kong and collaborator Dr. Kosa Goucher-Lambert (Lead PI, UC Berkeley) received a 2022 Seed Award from the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute (CITRIS) at the University of California (UC). Their research project is titled "Trust aware human-machine teaming using real-time neurophysiological data". This is a 1-year project for approximately $60,000. Congratulations!
2022.11.22 - Professor Zhaodan Kong and collaborators Dr. Allie Anderson and Dr. Torin Clark at University of Colorado Boulder were awarded a research grant from AFOSR for a project titled "Metrics and Models for Real Time Inference and Prediction of Trust in Human-autonomy Teaming". This is a 3-year project for approximately $900,000. Congratulations to prof. Kong and his collaborators!
2022.11.15 - Professor Lee Miller, PhD (Principal Investigator) and co-investigators Jonathon Schofield, PhD and Sanjay Joshi, PhD were awarded a $150,000 grant for one year from Meta, for a project titled "Body Mass- and Age-Inclusive Wrist EMG Decoding with Implicit Real-Time Error Signals". Congratulations!
2022.11.2 - Professor Carolynn Patten was awarded a supplement to an existing NSF grant (HEBB: Human-Robot Enabled System to Induce Brain-Behavior Adaptations) supported through the CISE Directorate and M3X program. The supplement will fund two Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) from August 2022 through the 2022-2023 academic year.
2022.08.31 - Associate professor Weijian Yang, PD will be a speaker at the Science ǀ TCCI® Virtual Conference: Neuromodulation and Brain-Machine Interface on October 12-13, 2022. For more information and to register go to this link. Dr. Yang's talk is titled "Two-photon Imaging and Manipulation of Neural Circuits".
2022.08.09 - 09.11 - Marcus Battraw, PhD student in professor Jonathon Schofield's lab, attended the Myoelectric Controls Symposium 2022 (MEC22) at the University of New Brunswick (Fredericton, Canada). Marcus presented a poster titled "Development and Characterization of a Multiarticulate Pediatric Hand as a Research Platform for Functional Improvements".
2022.08.31 - Associate professor Weijian Yang, PhD will be a panelist at a webinar panel discussion organized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS titled "Exploring new developments in neuromodulation: Noninvasive technologies to train the brain". The webinar is on September 7, 2022, 9:00 AM PT. The link for more information and to register is here. is: https://www.science.org/content/webinar/exploring-new-developments-neuromodulation-noninvasive-technologies-train-brain
2022.08.14 The NeuralStorm program announced felllowship awards to its first cohort of graduate students. NeuralStorm is a research training program offered by the Center for Neuroengineering and Medicine at UC Davis, funded by an NSF NRT grant (NSF Award #2152260). We congratulate the new NeuralStorm Fellows:
- Katherine Foray, PhD student in the Neuroscience Graduate Group. Major professor: Wilsaan Joiner, PhD
- Ariana Moghbel, MD/PhD student in the Neuroscience Graduate Group. Major professor: Sheila Toprani, MD, PhD
- Logan Peters, PhD student in the Graduate Group in Computer Science. Major professor: Karen Moxon, PhD
- Adam Weiner, PhD student in the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Group. Major professor: Carolynn Patten, PT, PhD
- Peyton Young, PhD student in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Graduate Program. Major professor: Jonathon Schofield, PhD
- Run Zhang, PhD student in the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Group. Major professor: Christina Kim, PhD
2022.07.25 - 07.29 - Peyton Young, PhD student in professor Jonathon Schofield's lab, attended the RehabWeek conference in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The goal of the conference was to inform engineers, clinicians, and others in the field of assistive robotics about new rehabilitation technologies, techniques, and research results. Peyton presented a poster titled "Characterizing Pediatric Hand Grasps During Activities of Daily Living to Inform Robotic Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies".
2022.07.08 - Professor Lee Miller, PhD is the PI of a new Highly Innovative Award from the NIH/NCATS UC Davis Clinical and Translational Science Center for the project titled "A Neuroprosthesis to Restore Speech in People with Anarthria". The co-investigators are: assistant professor David Brandman, MD, PhD, FRCSC, assistant professor Sergey Stavisky, PhD, professor Randy O'Reilly, PhD and Dana Farias, M.S., C.C.C-S.L.P. The project's specific aim is to develop an automated and validated metric to assess intelligibility of synthetically generated speech for a BCI system. Congratulations to the entire team!
2022.07.01 - Weijian Yang, PhD was promoted to Associate Professor. Dr. Yang is now an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering and affiliated faculty in the Center for Neuroengineering & Medicine at UC Davis. Congratulations, professor Yang!
2022.07.01 - Erkin Şeker, PhD was promoted to Full Professor. Dr. Şeker is now a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering and Co-Director of the Center for Neuroengineering & Medicine at UC Davis. Congratulations, professor Şeker!
2022.07.01 - Wilsaan Joiner, PhD was promoted to Full Professor. Dr. Joiner is now a Professor in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior in the College of Biological Sciences, joint appointment with the Department of Neurology in the School of Medicine, in the Center for Neuroscience, and a member of the Steering Committee of the Center for Neuroengineering & Medicine at UC Davis. Congratulations, professor Joiner!
2022.06.14 Assistant professor David Brandman, MD, PhD, FRCSC and assistant professor Sergey Stavisky, PhD, together with professor Randy O'Reilly, PhD and Dana Farias, M.S., C.C.C-S.L.P. won a New Research Initiatives and Interdisciplinary Research grant (Faculty Senate) for a collaborative neuroengineering project proposal titled "A new interdisciplinary initiative for restoring lost speech: developing a clinically validated deep learning-based intelligibility measure for speech synthesized from brain signals". Congratulations to the entire team!
2022.04.21 Postdoctoral researcher David Young, PhD, BRaIN Lab, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, received a TL-1 postdoc award from the UC Davis Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC). Congratulations to Dr. Young!
2022.03.29 Center affiliated faculty Sheela Toprani, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology has been named a KL2 Scholar in the CTSC (Clinical and Translational Science Center) KL2 Program. The goal of the program is to accelerate the career development of promising junior faculty, promoting their development as independent clinical multidisciplinary research investigators. Center Co-Director Karen Moxon serves as a mentor, together with Dr. Jack Lin and Dr. Amy Brooks-Kayal. Congratulations to prof. Toprani!
2022.03.08 Professor Emeritus Mark Yarborough was awarded a 3-year R01 grant from the NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), titled "The RATIOS Study: Risk/Benefit Assessment by IRB Review of Phase One Studies". The current period budget is $645,308. Congratulations to prof. Yarborough!
2022.02.03 The UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab, led by Center affiliated faculty David Brandman, MD, PhD, FRCSC and Sergey Stavisky, PhD has officially joined the BrainGate Consortium, joining three other groups at Brown/MGH/Providence VA; Stanford; and Emory/Georgia Tech. Congratulations to Drs. Brandman and Stavisky for joining the largest and longest-running intracortical BCI clinical trial to restore speech and movement.

News Bites - 2021

2021.12.03 Professor Mitch Sutter was awarded a 5-year R01 grant from the NIH National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), titled "Spectral and Temporal Integration in the Auditory System". The current year budget is $503,147. Congratulations to prof. Sutter!
2021.08.06 - Professor Carolynn Patten and her collaborator, professor B.J. Fregly from Rice University were awarded a Bioengineering Research Grant titled "OpenSim Enhancements to Design Personalized Treatments for Movement Dysfunction" from the NIH National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. The 5-year, $4.5M grant scored in the top 2 percentile! Congratulations to prof. Patten and Fregly!
2021.08.05 - Professor Karen Moxon and professor Ignacio Saez (now at the School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) were awarded a 5-year grant titled "Invasive decoding and stimulation of altered reward computations in depression" from the NIH National Institute of Mental Health. Congratulations!
2021.07.15 - Professor Jonathon Schofield (PI) and professor Wilsaan Joiner (Co-PI) were awarded an NSF grant titled “Understanding Impaired Muscle Activity to Improve Human-Technology Interfaces for Pediatric Prostheses”. The 3-year, ~$500,000 grant starts October 1, 2021. Congratulations to prof. Schofield and prof. Joiner!
2021.06.24 - Professor Sanjay Joshi has been appointed for a 3-year term to the Public Scholarship & Engagement Faculty Engagement Advisory Committee, under the Office of the Vice Provost of Public Scholarship. The Faculty Engagement Advisory Committee consists of faculty and researcher constituents who advise, support and contribute to the office of Public Scholarship and Engagement (PSE), specifically regarding issues pertaining to faculty, academic programs, and the Academic Senate, but also more broadly for PSE objectives.
2021.06.23 - Professor Carolynn Patten has been appointed Co-Director of the Academic Research Careers for Medical Doctors (ARC-MD) program. ARC-MD is a unique five (5) year honors pathway at UC Davis School of Medicine that mentors medical students who envision a career as research faculty in a medical school or who want to use research and to improve health in their community. These students are drawn from diverse backgrounds and committed to research as a foundational aspect of their career. Through her involvement in ARC-MD Dr. Patten seeks to strengthen the biomedical engineer-to-MD pipeline.
2021.06.15 - Professor Carolynn Patten was awarded a supplement to an existing NSF grant (HEBB: Human-Robot Enabled System to Induce Brain-Behavior Adaptations) supported through the CISE Directorate and M3X program. The supplement will fund two Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) from August 2021 through the 2021-2022 academic year.
2021.06.11 - Caitlin Banks, M.S. and Adam Weiner, M.E. (Biomedical Engineering Graduate Group), both PhD graduate students in professor Carolynn Patten's BRaIN Lab won Diversity Travel Fellowship Awards to the 2021 American Society for Biomechanics. Congratulations to Caitlin and Adam!
2021.06.10 - Barath Palanisamy in professor Erkin Şeker's lab received a Department Citation in Biomedical Engineering Award. Congrats, Barath!
2021.06.08 - Jochen Ditterich, PhD has been promoted to Full Professor. Dr. Ditterich is a Professor in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior, in the Center for Neuroscience, and a member of the Steering Committee of the Center for Neuroengineering & Medicine at UC Davis. Congratulations, professor Ditterich!
2021.06.07 - Caitlin Banks, M.S., PhD graduate student in professor Carolynn Patten's BRaIN Lab won 2nd place at the Poster Competition during the 10th Annual (Virtual) BME Graduate Group (BMEGG) Student Research Symposium. Congratulations, Caitlin!
2021.06.05 - David Young, PhD, postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Carolynn Patten's BRaIN Lab was selected as one of the 2021 Editor's Top 10 for Frontiers in Human Neuroscience | Motor Neuroscience for his article titled Non-invasive Brain Stimulation of the Posterior Parietal Cortex Alters Postural Adaptation. Congratulations, Dr. Young!
2021.06.04 - Sachit Nagella in professor Erkin Şeker's lab received the Department Citation in Chemical Engineering Award and a Hanson Family Undergraduate Research Publication Award. Congratulations, Sachit!
2021.06.04 - Barath Palanisamy in professor Erkin Şeker's lab received an Honorable Mention for Chancellor's Award of Excellence in Undergraduate Research and a Hanson Family Undergraduate Research Publication Award. Congratulations, Barath!
2021.05.28 - Professor Mark Yarborough was awarded a 2-year grant from the Arnold Ventures foundation for his proposal titled "Assessing Failures in the Review Process for Clinical Trials".
2021.05.07 - Caitlin Banks, MS was awarded the 2021 Women in Science Merck Scholarship by the Society of Women Engineers. Caitlin is a PhD graduate student in professor Carolynn Patten's BRaIN Lab and an NIH NRSA Fellow at UC Davis Health. Congratulations, Caitlin!
2021.04.24 - Caitlin Banks, MS won a Floyd and Mary Schwall Dissertation Year Fellowship for "continuing students engaged in medically related research with a human focus" (Biomedical Engineering Graduate Group). Caitlin is a PhD graduate student in professor Carolynn Patten's BRaIN Lab and an NIH NRSA Fellow at UC Davis Health. Congratulations, Caitlin!
2021.04.23 - Associate Professor Erkin Şeker was awarded a Supplement to his NIH NINDS R03 grant, titled “Interplay of Neuroinflammation and Tau Transport in a Microfluidic Primary Neural Cell Tri-Culture Model”.
2021.04.22 - Professor Karen Moxon was awarded an NSF INTERN supplement to an existing NSF DARE grant. This supplement will fund an internship in industry for PhD graduate student Bharadwaj Nandakumar.
2021.03.24 - Caitlin Banks, MS won a Diversity Travel Fellowship Award (2021-2024) from the American Society for Neurorehabilitation (link). Caitlin is a PhD graduate student in professor Carolynn Patten's BRaIN Lab and an NIH NRSA Fellow at UC Davis Health. Congratulations, Caitlin!
2021.03.09 - A new article authored by professors Stephen Robinson, Sanjay Joshi and colleagues has been published online in the AIAA Journal of Aerospace Information Systems. Title: "Effects of Augmented Feedback and Motor Learning Adaptation on Human-Automation Interaction Factors". Link: https://doi.org/10.2514/1.I010915
2021.01.25 - NEW COURSE: Introduction to Neuroengineering, EEC 289L, Spring Quarter 2021. The objective of this team-taught interdisciplinary course is to introduce students to the key research areas and tools in neuroengineering, and employ NIH-style proposal writing exercises to integrate course content into a potential dissertation project. CRN: 62862
2021.01.07 - We invite submissions of artwork and sketches, to be used for a logo and other graphics at the Center for Neuroengineering & Medicine. Best entries will receive awards! Here is a link with more information.
2021.01.06 - We invite applications for student representatives (undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral scholars) of the Center for Neuroengineering & Medicine. Press here for more information.

News Bites - 2020

2020.12.03 - Associate Professor Zhaodan Kong’s DURIP proposal “Network-based Neurophysiological and Psychophysiological Metrics of Human Trust Dynamics When Teamed with Autonomy” was funded by AFOSR.
2020.12.03 - Professor Mark Yarborough's paper: “Using the concept of “deserved trust” to strengthen the value and integrity of biomedical research” was accepted for publication in journal Accountability in Research (link).
2020.11.19 - Professor Mark Yarborough's paper titled: “Moving towards less biased research” was accepted for publication in BMJ Open Science Journal and is now available at this link.
2020.10.08 - Associate Professor Jochen Ditterich's paper titled “A user-friendly algorithm for adaptive closed-loop phase-locked stimulation” was accepted for publication in the Journal of Neuroscience Methods (available here).
2020.10.08 - Professor Karen Moxon was named IEEE Senior Member, as recognition for significant contributions to the field through professional and technical excellence.
2020.10.05 - Assistant Professor Weijian Yang received a $1.45M NIH Brain Initiative R01 grant, titled “Large-field-of-view high-throughput two-photon endoscope to image neuronal activity”, co-founded by NINDS and NEI.
2020.04 - Postdoctoral Scholar Jacqueline Overton, PhD was awarded a CTSC TL1 fellowship, 2020-2022. Assistant Professor Ignacio Saez, PhD, Neurological Surgery is her mentor.

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