Funded Projects

Browse wide-ranging research at the frontiers of neuroscience supported by Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute grants, awards, and training fellowships.

Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
Neuroscience:Translate Award
2023
High-Fidelity Artificial Retina for Vision Restoration

This team will use their Neuroscience:Translate award to develop a large-scale bi-directional neural interface that will restore high-fidelity vision to people blinded by retinal degeneration.

Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
Neuroscience:Translate Award
2023
New Thrombectomy Device for Endovascular Neurosurgery

This team will use their Neuroscience:Translate award to develop an entirely new class of ischemic stroke treatment device that will lead to improved clot extraction to improve the success of endovascular thrombectomy.

Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
Big Ideas in Neuroscience Award
2017
NeuroChoice Initiative (Phase 2)
We propose to connect diverse faculty to deepen interdisciplinary understanding of the neural mechanisms supporting addictive choice by combining conceptual, experimental, and clinical approaches that bridge historically disparate fields of inquiry.
Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
Big Ideas in Neuroscience Award
2017
Stanford NeuroTechnology Initiative (Phase 2)

Our goal is to develop the next generation of neural interfaces that match the resolution and performance of the biological circuitry. We will focus on two signature efforts to spearhead the necessary advances: high-density wire bundles for electrical recording and stimulation, and analog and digital bi-directional retinal prostheses for restoration of vision.

Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
Big Ideas in Neuroscience Award
2017
Stanford Brain Rejuvenation Project (Phase 2)

The Stanford Brain Rejuvenation Project is an initiative by leading aging researchers, neuroscientists, chemists, and engineers to understand the basis of brain aging and rejuvenation and how they relate to neurodegeneration.

Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
Big Ideas in Neuroscience Award
2015
NeuroVision Initiative

The goal is to forge an inter-disciplinary collaboration between physicists, biologists, chemists, and translational medical scientists by inventing new ways of visualizing the brain, from individual molecules to neuronal circuits to entire brain regions, from a normally functioning neuron to a diseased brain.

Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
Big Ideas in Neuroscience Award
2015
Stroke Collaborative Action Network

Breaches barriers in our understanding of stroke to develop therapies and improve stroke recovery.

Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
Big Ideas in Neuroscience Award
2015
NeuroChoice: Optimizing Choice - from neuroscience to public policy
This proposal brings together faculty from diverse disciplines to deepen our understanding of the neural mechanisms supporting choice, and extend this knowledge to optimize choices related to addiction and investment. This consilience will require new conceptual and experimental tools designed to bridge historically distant fields of inquiry. Our team aims to transform the scientific understanding of choice, and to translate relevant knowledge to promote more optimal decision-making.
Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
Big Ideas in Neuroscience Award
2018
NeuroPlant Initiative

The NeuroPlant Initiative aims to leverage a botanical armamentarium to manipulate the brain — by building a pipeline to explore chemicals synthesized in plants as potential new treatments for neurological disease and as a window into the chemistry of the brain.

Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
Big Ideas in Neuroscience Award
2018
Neurodevelopment Initiative

Investigating how the brain develops from infancy to adulthood across species, focusing on how the interplay between structural development, functional development, experience and affect brain computations and ultimately behavior.

Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
Big Ideas in Neuroscience Award
2018
Stanford Brain Organogenesis Program (Phase 1)

Developing brain organoids – three dimensional brain tissues grown in the lab – to study human brain development, evolution and neuropsychiatric disorders.

Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
Big Ideas in Neuroscience Award
2018
Neuro-omics Initiative (Phase 1)

Creating new tools to help neuroscientists bridge the study of genes and proteins operating in the brain to the study of brain circuits and systems, which could lead to a deeper understanding of brain function and disease.

Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
Neuroscience:Translate Award
2019
Multi-modal deep learning for automated seizure localization

Developing an automated seizure detection and localization system based on deep neural networks, EEG data, and real-time video with the goal to dramatically increase neurologist diagnostic capabilities while improving quality of care.

Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
Neuroscience:Translate Award
2020
Targeting DNA repair for neuroinflammation in stroke
Acute brain inflammation after stroke and head trauma causes adverse health outcomes affecting millions of patients each year in the U.S., and current treatments are insufficient. This project will test a promising new therapy to reduce inflammation by targeting the enzyme OGG1, a potentially important controller of acute inflammatory responses. This project is jointly supported by the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute and SPARK.
Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
Neuroscience:Translate Award
2020
The wearable ENG: A dizzy attack event monitor
Recurrent dizziness attacks are a debilitating condition for 10% of the population during their lifetime, and can lead to a complete inability to function, and to multiple hospital admissions and investigations chasing many potential diagnoses. This project aims to address the unmet need for means of tracking patients' specific symptoms, so that correct treatments can be identified that will improve patients' function and quality of life.