Faculty

  • Edward Chang, MD

    Principal Investigator

    Dr. Edward Chang is a neurosurgeon at UC San Francisco specializing in the treatment of intractable epilepsy, trigeminal neuralgia, and brain tumors. His research focuses upon the brain mechanisms for human speech, movement, and cognition. He co-directs the Center for Neural Engineering & Prostheses at UC Berkeley and UCSF, which develops state-of-the-art biomedical devices to restore function for patients with neurological disabilities.

  • Matt Leonard, PhD

    Associate Professor

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    Matt Leonard is a cognitive neuroscientist interested in how the brain understands sequences of speech sounds as words. At UCSF, he studies the neural basis of word representations using ECoG and stimulation techniques. He was also a co-PI on the DARPA-funded Targeted Neuroplasticity Training (TNT) program, which seeks to use non-invasive peripheral nerve stimulation to enhance and accelerate learning of complex cognitive tasks like language acquisition.

  • David Moses, PhD

    Assistant Professor

    David Moses completed his doctoral research in the Chang lab, where he studied speech perception, automatic speech recognition, brain state representations, and real-time neural signal processing. As a postdoc and now faculty member, he is continuing his research on automatic speech recognition and real-time neural signal processing.

  • Kristin Sellers, PhD

    Assistant Professor

    Kristin Sellers is an Assistant Professor with a research program focused on enabling human brain-computer interfaces for the treatment of neurological and psychiatric conditions, primarily through closed-loop neurostimulation. Previously, she completed her Ph.D. in Neurobiology at UNC-Chapel Hill. She then joined the Chang Lab, investigating therapeutic electrical stimulation for neuropsychiatric disorders as part of the DARPA-funded SUBNETS project and in clinical trials in major depressive disorder and chronic pain.

  • Ankit Khambhati, PhD

    Assistant Professor

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    Ankit Khambhati is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurological Surgery. He is an electrical and biomedical engineer interested in understanding the structure and physiology of interconnected brain networks. His research focuses on mapping and repairing the complex neural communication pathways, or brain connections, that are disrupted in brain network disorders. Ankit earned a PhD in Bioengineering from UPenn and completed a postdoc at UCSF, where he is now leading a neural data science research program. His work combines network science, control theory, and machine learning to develop computational tools for discovering personalized treatment strategies, including neuromodulation techniques like deep brain stimulation, for neuropsychiatric disorders.

  • Peng Cong, PhD

    Professor, Director of Brain Interface Technology

    Peng Cong joined the UCSF Department of Neurosurgery as Professor and Director of Brain Interface Technology, where he works closely with clinical teams to explore cutting-edge brain interface technology for the treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders and the development of speech prostheses.

Postdocs

  • Anusha Allawala, PhD (Brown)

    Website

    neuromodulation for psychiatric disorders; affective and cognitive processing in mood disorders

  • Jon Gauthier, PhD (MIT)

    Website | Google Scholar | CV

    computational modeling of spoken language understanding; representation of structure and meaning

  • Shailee Jain, PhD (UT Austin)

    Website | Google Scholar | CV

    modeling with artificial neural networks; processing of time & context in speech

  • DongHyeok Lee, PhD (Seoul National University)

    brain state effect on perceptual learning; neuromodulation

  • Jessie Liu, PhD (Berkeley-UCSF)

    Website

    speech neuroprosthetic technology; neural basis of speech production

  • Yitzak Norman, PhD (Weizmann Institute)

    Website | Google Scholar | CV

    cortical-hippocampal interplay in speech production and perception

  • Krishnakant Saboo, PhD (UIUC)

    Website | Google Scholar | CV

    neuromodulation for epilepsy, machine learning

  • Many Xu, PhD (Johns Hopkins)

    speech production as motor sequence generation; single-neuron activities and circuit level computations

  • Xiaofang Yang, PhD (Princeton)

    functional connectivity and population coding in speech processing

  • Lingyun Zhao, PhD (Johns Hopkins)

    Google Scholar

    coordination in motor production; sensorimotor mechanism in speech

Graduate Students

  • Samantha Brosler (BioEng)

    computational methods for speech and motor decoding, BCI

  • Ilina Bhaya-Grossman (BioEng)

    Website

    bilingual speech perception

  • Quinn Greicius (BioEng)

  • Kaylo Littlejohn (EECS)

    Website
    speech synthesis; machine learning; assistive communication devices

  • Ashley Qin (BioEng)

    Google Scholar

    second language acquisition in the adult brain

  • P.S. Nandini (BioEng)

    timescales in long-term recordings of neural physiology; treatment-resistant depression

  • Jeremy Saal (Neuroscience)

    chronic pain; pain expectation; network analysis and decoding

  • Alex Silva (MD-PhD, BioEng)

    Google Scholar

    Brain-Computer Interface; intraoperative recording; epilepsy

Research Staff

  • Irina Hallinan

    Research & Development Engineer

    Website

    intuitive brain-computer interfaces; real-time neural signal processing

  • Rujul Gandhi

    Associate Specialist

    Website

    modeling with artificial neural networks; speech perception

  • Catherine Wang

    Speech-Language Pathologist

    language evaluation; aphasia

  • Anthony Fong

    Clinical Research Coordinator

    Software for ECoG monitoring and therapeutic stimulation

  • Cady Kurtz-Miott

    Clinical Research Coordinator

    BRAVO clinical trial; EXPY study with Brigham & Women’s Hospital

  • Aria Lin

    Clinical Research Coordinator

    neural mechanisms of human emotion

  • Siddharth Marathe

    Clinical Research Coordinator

    ECoG, NeuroPixels data collection and processing

  • Tanay Poddar

    Clinical Research Coordinator

    ECoG, NeuroPixels data collection and processing

Medical Residents/Fellows

  • Jonathan Burke, MD PhD

  • Joline Fan, MD

  • Andrew Moses Lee, MD

  • Clara Starkweather, MD PhD

  • Maxwell Wang, MD PhD

Collaborators

Alumni

Postdocs

Gopala Anumanchipalli, PhD (Assistant Professor, UC Berkeley)

Maxime Baud, MD PhD (Epileptologist, Lead of e-lab, University of Bern)

Maryam Bijanzadeh, PhD (iRhythm Technologies)

Kristofer Bouchard, PhD (Research Scientist, LBNL)

Jen Dwyer, MD PhD (Sleep fellowship, Stanford University)

Erik Edwards, PhD (Research Scientist, EMR.AI)

Dario Englot, MD PhD (Assistant Professor, Neurosurgery, Vanderbilt)

Neal Fox, PhD (Crystal Springs Uplands School)

Laura Gwilliams, PhD (Assistant Professor, Stanford)

Liberty Hamilton, PhD (Assistant Professor, UT Austin)

Fatemeh Khatami, PhD (Assistant Professor, University of the Pacific)

Katsuaki Kojima, MD PhD MPH (Assistant Professor, Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati)

Deborah Levy, PhD (Postdoctoral Lecturer, Princeton)

Yuanning Li, PhD (Assistant Professor, ShanghaiTech University)

Nima Mesgarani, PhD (Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering, Columbia)

Yulia Oganian, PhD (Assistant Professor, University of Tübingen)

Erin Rich, MD PhD (Assistant Professor, Neuroscience, Mount Sinai)

John Rolston, MD PhD (Assistant Professor, Neurosurgery, University of Utah)

Narayan Sankaran, PhD (Fellow, Kavli Center for Ethics, Science and the Public, UC Berkeley)

Terri Scott, PhD (Assistant Teaching Professor, Northeastern University Oakland)

Prashanth Selvaraj, PhD (Research Scientist, Institute for Disease Modeling)

Matthias Sjerps, PhD (Postdoc, Radboud University Nijmegen)

Will Schuerman, PhD (Amazon AWS)

Emily Stephen, PhD (Assistant Professor, Statistical Neuroscience, Boston University)

Pengfei Sun, PhD (Software Engineer, Cisco)

Azadeh Yazdan, PhD (Assistant Professor, Neuroengineering, Univ Washington)

Han Yi, PhD (Institute for Defense Analyses)

Yizhen Zhang, PhD (Resident Researcher, OpenAI)

Josh Chartier, PhD (Research Scientist, Facebook Reality Labs)

Connie Cheung, PhD (Research Scientist, Scanadu)

Emily Cibelli, PhD (Postdoc, Northwestern)

David Conant, PhD (Head of Bioinformatics, Synthego)

Ben Dichter, PhD (CatalystNeuro)

Sean Metzger, PhD (Postdoc, Meta)

David Moses, PhD (Postdoc, UCSF)

Leah Muller, PhD (Intuitiv Surgical)

Claire Tang (Data Scientist, Samba TV)

Graduate Students

Vanessa Anderson (Medical Student, Columbia University)

Miranda Babiak (Speech Pathologist, UPMC)

Nathan Cahn (DocMatter)

Ruofan Cai (Graduate Student, University of Washington)

Dharshan Chandramohan

David Chang (Medical Student, Cornell University)

Maansi Desai (Graduate Student, University of Texas)

Max Dougherty (Medical Student, Yale University)

Felicia Elefant (Clinical Collaborations Project Coordinator at NeuroPace, Inc.)

Mona Fahim (Signal Integrity Engineer at Rambus)

Garret Kurteff (Graduate Student, University of Texas)

Daniel Lam (Univ Chicago Medical School)

Morgan Lee (Medical Student, University of Southern California)

Ben Lucas

Pierluigi Mantovani (Evolution Devices)

Angela Ren (CMU HCI program)

Ryon Sabouni

Margaret Seaton (Medical Student, UC San Diego)

Alia Shafi (Software Engineering Student, App Academy)

Deanna Wallace, PhD

David Xie

Staff

Medical Residents / Students

Jonathan Breshears, MD

Sattar Khoshkoo

Katsuaki Kojima

Kunal Raygor, MD