Training Program in Neuroengineering

We submit an interdisciplinary NeuroEngineering program to educate and train the next generation of scientists, educators, and innovators. We build on 16 years of experience in neuroengineering training and over 60 years of Biomedical Engineering predoctoral training. The program’s most salient feature is a rich educational and collaborative research environment straddling both the engineering and medical schools. For example, our students acquire depth in the biological sciences through courses in the medical school or arts and sciences, and quantitative and computational sciences through classes in the engineering school. The emerging transformative change presents an opportunity to collaborate with clinical scientists to translate discoveries and bring innovations into practice. Mentors to the program are from Biomedical Engineering, other engineering departments, the Mind-Brain Institute, various clinical departments (Neurology, Neurosurgery, Otolaryngology, Radiology), the School of Arts and Sciences (Cognitive Sciences), and the Applied Physics Laboratory. Our research program is well-funded, and we maintain an outstanding record of funding all trainees for future years. Our student pool has been exceptional in quality and growing; we continue to draw from a highly competitive national pool. For the current phase of the training program, we have added Clinical NeuroEngineering as a new track, which has been implemented with the help of several highly regarded clinical faculty members. We have addressed student interest in translational research and careers by introducing a Translational NeuroEngineering track, which involves entrepreneurial faculty. This is captured in a revised NeuroEngineering 2.0 curriculum, for example, by addressing the emerging trend (and current pandemic-related necessity) of distance learning through a distance learning (e-TRAIN) curriculum. We believe that this innovative curriculum will prepare our students in more diverse and exciting scientific careers, not only academia but also increasingly essential careers in regulatory, industrial and entrepreneurial careers. A new student-led initiative has been the Translational NeuroEngineering (TNT) initiative that has spawned several exciting local mentoring and outreach activities. Building on this success, we will implement a new NeuroEngineering xTranslation (NExT) initiative to encourage and mentor trainees interested in entrepreneurial careers. We have increased our efforts to place students in as many laboratories and research topics to expand the research problem scope as well as access to and oversight by mentors with suitable experiences and expertise. As the final step in the training journey, we will implement a rigorous management and evaluation of outcomes through the NeuroFeedback (NErF) system, involving our extensive alumni community.