Funded Research Projects
NeuroHealth | SIGF - Graduate Fellowship
Lead Researcher(s): Erin Kunz
Many neurological injuries and diseases such as brainstem stroke and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) result in severe speech impairment, drastically reducing quality of life. Recent progress in brain-computer interfaces (BCI) has allowed these individuals to communicate, but performance is...
NeuroDiscovery | SIGF - Graduate Fellowship
Lead Researcher(s): Tamara Chan
In a process called tiling, homeostatic microglia homogenously organize in a grid-like fashion to achieve efficient surveillance of the brain. The molecular mechanisms underlying tiling are unknown. I hypothesize that microglia use cell-surface proteins to sense density of neighboring microglia,...
NeuroEngineering | SIGF - Graduate Fellowship
Lead Researcher(s): Yixiu Zhao
We propose a novel framework for efficient Bayesian cognition called Inference via Abstraction (IvA), which learns to approximate complex world models with simpler abstractions that capture main dependencies, but leverage structure in the prior distribution for efficient inference. We instantiate...
NeuroDiscovery | SIGF - Graduate Fellowship
Lead Researcher(s): Kyrstyn Ong
Although ultrasonic neurostimulation has the potential to outperform traditional treatments for many debilitating neurological disorders, it remains unclear how ultrasound affects nervous system activity on the molecular level. Since ultrasound acts on a molecular scale in a macroscopic environment...
NeuroDiscovery | Research Accelerator
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.
NeuroEngineering | Big Idea
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.
NeuroDiscovery | Research Accelerator
Lead Researcher(s): Kalanit Grill-Spector, Jennifer A McNab
Elucidating the development of the infant’s brain structure & function.
NeuroHealth | Big Idea
Lead Researcher(s): Sergiu P. Pasca, Karl Deisseroth
Developing brain organoids and assembloids – three dimensional brain tissues grown in the lab – to study human brain development, evolution and neuropsychiatric disorders.
NeuroEngineering | Neuroscience:Translate
Lead Researcher(s): Chirag Patel, MD, PhD, Melanie Hayden Gephart
The limited available treatments (e.g., radiation, chemotherapy) for glioblastoma (GBM) can lead to swelling in the brain that causes elevated intracranial pressure (ICP), the timing of which is unpredictable; this results in the patient presenting to the emergency room with headaches, vomiting, or...
NeuroEngineering | Neuroscience:Translate
Lead Researcher(s): Peter L. Santa Maria, MBBS, PhD, Ada Poon
Sensorineural hearing loss is an increasingly prevalent condition that causes disability to over a third of US adults aged over 65. We are developing a breakthrough device to restore high-frequency hearing that preserves residual hearing through a reversible and minimally invasive approach.
