NeuroTech Alumni

Ziad is a PhD student in electrical engineering in Prof. Ada Poon’s group. Ziad graduated from North Carolina State University with BS degrees in electrical engineering and biomedical engineering. He previously worked on utilizing ultrasound for non-invasive neuromodulation and investigated signal prediction schemes for mmWave communication systems. He is interested in designing circuits for both in vitro and in vivo systems to stimulate and record neurons at the cellular level using magnetic fields.

Shenandoah graduated from Vassar College in 2018 with a BA in Mathematics and Neuroscience, and in 2019 received a B.Eng. from Dartmouth College in Biomedical Engineering. Now working on her PhD in Bioengineering at Stanford, in the lab of Karl Deisseroth, her research interests lie in using neurotech to explore brain-wide states associated with mood, emotions, and subjective experience. Shenandoah also aims to develop noninvasive methods for interfacing with the brain.

Mihyun graduated from the dual degree program at Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology, with a BS in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology and a BS in Biomedical Engineering. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Bioengineering at Stanford, advised by Professor Kim Butts Pauly. She is interested in understanding the mechanisms that enable focused ultrasound to transcranially modulate brain activity. Specifically, she is conducting in vivo studies in hopes of eventually bringing this noninvasive technique to the clinic to treat neurological diseases.

Maddy graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a BS in Biomedical Engineering and minors in Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Physics. She is currently pursuing her Bioengineering PhD at Stanford University with a neuroscience focus. Her research interests revolve around the use of technology to answer questions regarding retinal ganglion cell-type contributions in visual perception and acuity.

Much like many other first-generation college students, I spent my undergraduate experience iteratively discovering, and eventually converging on, my fascination for learning, growing, and teaching as a scholar. My fascination found its form in studying the most complex and compelling systems found in nature, whether that be through researching emergent phenomena in condensed matter physics or by building and applying state-of-the-art neural probes to resolve the onset and progression of neurodegeneration at the single-unit resolution.

Andrew graduated from UC San Diego in 2019 with a major in NanoEngineering and a minor in
Mathematics. Currently, he is working on his PhD in Daniel Palanker’s group at Stanford. His research
focuses on developing retinal prosthesis with high resolution and acuity for restoration of sight in retinal
degeneration. He is aiming to achieve the single neuron stimulation of electro neural interfaces by
fabricating a novel photovoltaic array with 3-D interface with pixel sizes down to cellular dimensions.

Alissa Ling graduated from Washington University in St. Louis as a double major in Applied Math and Physics. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Electrical Engineering in Professor Paul Nuyujukian's Brain Interfacing Lab (BIL). Her research goal is to advance our understanding of motor cortical control of naturalistic behavior by developing a platform that combines wireless electrophysiology with a markerless motion capture system. She hopes that her research can inform clinical studies that can improve the standard of care for patients with motor disabilities.

Shreyas Muralidharan is a PhD student in electrical engineering advised by Professors Krishna Shenoy and Tirin Moore. Shreyas graduated from The Ohio State University with Bachelor's degrees in Electrical Engineering and Physics. His previous research was in wide band-gap semiconductors and device fabrication. He is currently working on utilizing new electrophysiology and computational methods to address cognitive neuroscience questions. In his free time, Shreyas enjoys playing tennis, singing, and hiking.

I am a second year Ph.D. student in the Materials Science and Engineering department. My current research focuses on developing plasmonic nanostructures for optogenetic applications. I’m from Middletown, CT and received my B.S. in Materials Science from the California Institute of Technology, where my research focused on toughening freeze-cast porous ceramics. I’ve also validated an electrochemical model for fabricating wood-derived copper composites and studied the effect of an applied electric field on grain refinement in aluminum alloys.

Praful graduated from Caltech in 2019 with a BS in Electrical Engineering. He is currently a PhD candidate in Electrical Engineering co-advised by Professor E.J. Chichilnisky (Neurosurgery) and Professor Subhasish Mitra (Electrical Engineering). Praful's research involves electrically stimulating the output neurons of the retina with multi-electrode arrays to recreate the complex spatio-temporal signals that produce vision in a healthy eye.