Matthew Smith is a Professor of  Biomedical Engineering and the Neuroscience Institute and Co-Director of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition. His PhD was in Neural Science from New York University, and postdoctoral training was in neurophysiology and computational neuroscience at both Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh.

Matthew has worked with nonhuman primates as a model system for human perception, cognition and behavior for over 25 years, seeking to understand the brain’s mechanisms for interpreting visual inputs, processing them, making decisions and generating motor outputs. His work mainly involves computational approaches to electrophysiology in non-human primates. Recently, I have employed brain computer interfaces and closed loop systems with stimulation to shape neural activity.

John Rolston received his Bachelor’s degree from Columbia University, where he won the Russell Mills Award for Excellence in Computer Science. For his PhD, John developed brain-computer interfaces for epilepsy at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University. He received an MD from Emory University before completing residency training and post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco.

John’s NIH-funded laboratory investigates how neural engineering can be used to map and ultimately rewire the diseased brain. The same tools can be used to better understand neural information processing and how it is disordered in illnesses like epilepsy, Parkinson’s, and psychiatric disease.

Yisong Yue is a Professor of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at the California Institute of Technology. He was previously a research scientist at Disney Research. Before that, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Machine Learning Department and the iLab at Carnegie Mellon University. He received a Ph.D. from Cornell University and a B.S. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Yisong previously served as Senior Program Chair of ICLR 2024 and General Chair of ICLR 2025, and currently serves on the ICLR board.

Yisong's research interests are centered around machine learning, and in particular getting theory to work in practice. To that end, his research agenda spans both fundamental and applied pursuits, from novel learning-theoretic frameworks all the way to deployment in autonomous driving on public roads. During his time in industry, Yisong worked on machine learning approaches to behavior modeling and motion planning for autonomous driving.

Maryam Shanechi is the Sawchuk Chair and Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, and Neuroscience at USC. She is the Founding Director of the USC Center for Neurotechnology. She received her BS degree in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto and her SM and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT. Awards include NIH Director’s New Innovator, NSF CAREER, ONR YIP, ASEE Curtis McGraw Research Award, MIT TR35, Popular Science Brilliant 10, Science News SN10, and One Mind Rising Star. She is an IEEE Fellow and a two-time Blavatnik National Awards Finalist. Maryam conducts research at the interface of AI, control theory, and neuroscience to develop AI-driven systems for closed-loop neural decoding and neuromodulation.

Peter Tsai, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience, Psychiatry, and Pediatrics at UT Southwestern Medical Center, Children's Medical Center Dallas. Peter’s research focuses on using rodent models and human studies to examine the contributions of the cerebellum to non-motor behaviors, especially in a neurodevelopmental context.

Outside of research, Peter runs the Cerebellar Neurodevelopmental and Ataxia Clinic at UTSW/ Children's Medical Center.

Catherine Stoodley is newly-appointed Research Faculty in the Developing Brain Institute at Children's National Hospital. From 2010-2023 she was on the Neuroscience faculty at American University. Dr. Stoodley has an undergraduate degree in Biology from Tufts University and completed her doctoral training in Neuroscience with Prof. John Stein at the University of Oxford. She completed postdoctoral training with Prof. Jeremy Schmahmann at Harvard Medical School / Massachusetts General Hospital.

Dr. Stoodley focuses on the role of the cerebellum in cognition and cognitive development in both typical and clinical populations. The lab tackles these questions using a combination of behavioral testing, structural and functional neuroimaging, lesion-symptom mapping, and cerebellar neuromodulation.

Dr. Terence Sanger received a bachelor’s and master’s degree in applied mathematics from Harvard University and a doctorate in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He attended medical school at Harvard Medical School and completed his medical internship and residency training in pediatrics at the USC/Los Angeles County Medical Center. Dr. Sanger completed residency and fellowship training in neurology at Boston Children’s Hospital, and additional fellowship training in the movement disorders unit at Toronto Western Hospital. In addition to his clinical fellowships, Dr. Sanger completed research fellowship training at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and at MIT.

Dr. Sanger currently serves as vice president for research and chief scientific officer at CHOC. He brings decades of experience in pediatric neurology, movement disorders and robotics to CHOC’s Research Institute.

Marta San Luciano, MD, received her medical degree from the University of Navarra, Spain, completed her residency in Neurology at Boston University Medical Center, and clinical and research fellowship in movement disorders at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York, during which she earned a master's degree in clinical research methods from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Marta joined the Division of Movement Disorders and Neuromodulation at UCSF in 2012, where she is currently an Associate Professor.

Her research interests are broadly in outcomes research in neuromodulation surgeries for movement disorders, and in clinical and genetic epidemiology of Parkinson's disease and dystonia.

Philip Sabes is a neurotechnology co-founder and UCSF Professor Emeritus. He received his PhD from MIT, working in human motor control and machine learning, and studied primate neurophysiology as a postdoc at Caltech. His UCSF lab combined neurophysiology, computation, and behavior to study sensory feedback in movement control. They also developed new technologies for Brain Machine Interfacing, including sensory neuroprosthetics. In 2017, Philip retired from UCSF to helped create the founding team of Neuralink. While there, the company refined the “sewing-machine” approach started in his lab, demonstrating 1000+ channels of robotically-inserted, micron-scale thin-film electrodes with a fully implanted, wireless interface.

Philip is currently Founder and CSO of a new startup focused on implantable electrode-based interfaces for neuromodulation. The company’s goals are to advance both the treatment of neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders and to enable new discoveries in human neuroscience.

Dr. Pouratian received his BS degree in Neuroscience from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1996 after which he matriculated into the Medical Scientist Training Program at UCLA, where he earned his PhD in Neuroscience in 2001 and his MD degree in 2003. He completed his neurosurgical training at the University of Virginia after which he began his career as a surgeon scientist at UCLA. In 2021, he was appointed Professor and Chair at UT Southwestern Medical Center.

Gianmarco Pinton received his PhD in Biomedical Engineering at Duke University. He is an Associate Professor in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University. The Pinton Lab is interested in the nonlinear propagation of ultrasound and mechanical waves and their applications to medical imaging and therapy. His research has been motivated by the observation that, for intense sources, the speed of wave propagation is no longer constant. This complicates the existing mathematical framework surrounding mechanical waves, but it also creates exciting new opportunities in medical imaging.

Michael S. Okun is a Distinguished Professor and serves as the Director of the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases at the University of Florida Health.  

Dr. Okun has served as the National Medical Director/Advisor for the Parkinson’s Foundation since 2006 and is co-founder of the Deep Brain Stimulation Think Tank.

Michael D. Fox completed a degree in Electrical Engineering at Ohio State University, an MD and PhD at Washington University in St. Louis, and Neurology Residency and Movement Disorders Fellowship at Mass Gen Brigham. Clinically, he specializes in the use of invasive and noninvasive brain stimulation for the treatment of neurological and psychiatric symptoms.

Dr. Fox’s research focuses on developing new and improved treatments for brain disease by understanding brain circuits and the effects of neuromodulation. He is the founding Director of the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. He is also the inaugural Raymond D. Adams Distinguished Chair of Neurology and the Kaye Family Research Director of Brain Stimulation.

Coralie de Hemptinne is a neurophysiologist working at the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases at the University of Florida. She earned my PhD in Neuroscience from the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. In 2010, Dr. De Hemptinne moved to the US for a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Phillip Starr, at the University of California San Francisco, then transitioned to a research associate position. In 2020, she joined the University of Florida as a Fixel Scholar and an assistant professor of neurology.

Dr. de Hemptinne’s research aims to understand the pathophysiology underlying motor and non-motor symptoms in neurological disorders, using acute and chronic brain recordings.

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Kathleen Cullen is the Raj and Neera Singh Professor in Biomedical Engineering and Director of the Center for Hearing and Balance at Johns Hopkins. She also holds appointments in Neuroscience and Otolaryngology. Dr. Cullen completed a BS degree in neuroscience and biomedical engineering at Brown University and her PhD at the University of Chicago. Cullen was then a postdoctoral fellow at the Montreal Neurological Institute. In 1994, she joined the Department of Physiology at McGill University, with concurrent appointments in Biomedical Engineering, Neuroscience, and Otolaryngology. She became a full professor in 2006 and moved to Johns Hopkins in 2016.

Aaron Batista received his PhD in Computation and Neural Systems from the California Institute of Technology and completed his postdoc at Stanford University / HHMI with Krishna Shenoy and Bill Newsome. He is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at University of Pittsburg. Aaron‘s laboratory at the Center for Neuroscience at University of Pittsburg explores the neural mechanisms of sensory-motor integration. They study how visually-guided arm and eye movements are orchestrated by the cerebral cortex. They then apply new discoveries in neurophysiology to help improve neural prosthetics - devices that can provide motor control to paralyzed individuals.

Amy Bastian is a neuroscientist and physical therapist who studies human movement. She is CSO of Kennedy Krieger Institute and Professor of Neuroscience, Neurology and PM&R at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Bastian is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and has received many honors including a Javits award from the National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke at NIH. Her research spans over 30 years, focusing on sensorimotor function and learning in people with cerebellar damage and stroke, as well as the development of motor control through childhood. She has mentored many PhD students, postdocs, and early career faculty who now lead successful research programs at major academic institutions.