Workshops

Full Day

Two NIH-funded national hubs, NTH (jointly between Johns Hopkins University and Howard University) and CINTA (Massachusetts General Hospital), hold spring and fall funding opportunities up to $500k per year seeking innovators to address unmet needs for clinical conditions impacted by the nervous system. This workshop will address the common challenges innovators face on their path towards creating a market ready product. We will describe how funding and mentorship from the hubs aims to accelerate neurotechnology translation and to open pathways for new and traditionally under-represented innovators. Attendees will have opportunities to hear from speakers with experience in commercialization, inclusive innovation, and FDA regulatory guidance.

Half Day

This workshop will engage members from all areas of the neurotechnology community – from students to PIs, from regulators to CEOs, and investors and other funders, in a review of the current trends and breakthroughs in BCI technology. Presenters include Blackrock Neurotech, Motif Neurotech, Paradromics, Precision Neuroscience, and Synchron. Senior executive representatives from each company will provide their respective visions for a patient-centric future of brain-computer interfaces and how to achieve that vision from a technical perspective.

Half Day

Different Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMI) have been developed in the past few years to restore function or improve the quality of life for people with limb difference and neural disorders. However, there is still a long way ahead to improve the interaction between the machine and the human. For instance, sensory feedback is a fundamental part of humans’ interaction with the environment and such feedback is currently missing in the commercial interfaces. To this end, researchers have been investigating different technologies to improve human and machine interactions through machine-tobrain interfaces (MBIs), paving the way to a new generation of interfaces with closed-loop capabilities.

Half Day

For many years now, implanted electrode arrays of different make and material are designed and used to record from and stimulate into the brain. Despite terrific progress, most of these implants do not find their way into truly longterm use, not to mentioned into standard clinical procedures. In order to investigate brain's complex response towards these foreign bodies neuroengineers have too long limited themselves to microscopy of brain tissue representing the implant’s impact by a mere handful of markers.