Members | Chamanzar

People

PI: Maysam Chamanzar

Maysam Chamanzar is an associate professor of ECE department at Carnegie Mellon University. He holds the Dr. William D. and Nancy W. Strecker career development chair professorship. He joined CMU in 2016. He was with the EECS department at University of California Berkeley as a postdoc researcher and later as a research scientist before joining CMU.

He is the director of Biophotonics and Neurotechnologies Lab and also the Shared Photonics Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University.

Maysam is also a faculty member of the Carnegie Mellon Neuroscience Institute (NI) and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC) and holds a courtesy appointment with the Biomedical Engineering department.

Research Staff and Postdocs

Vishal Jain

Vishal joined the team in Spring 2019 as a postdoc researcher after completing postdoc and research positions in University of Delhi, India and National Inst of Physiological Sciences, Japan. He received his PhD in Neuroscience from the Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences, India.

He is now working to design and perform neurobiology experiments to test and validate next generation non-invasive neural interfaces. He is jointly advised by Profs. Maysam Chamanzar and Pulkit Grover.

Research Areas: Neurobiology, Brain Slice and in-vivo Electrophysiology, Optogenetics.

Mats Forssel

Mats received an engineering degree from Ecole Centrale Paris in 2014, an MS in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University in 2012, and a PhD from Carnegie Mellon in 2019. He is now working as a postdoc researcher to design next generation non-invasive neural interfaces. He is jointly advised by Profs. Pulkit Grover and Maysam Chamanzar.

Research Areas: neural probes, brain-computer interfacing, polymer insulation.

Ibrahim Kimukin

Ibrahim is working as a research scientist to design next generation implantable neural interfaces. He is working on the design and fabrication of high density steeltrodes and also an optical smart dura, a novel surface interface with the brain. He is jointly advised by Profs. Elias Towe and Maysam Chamanzar.

Research Areas: neural probes, photonics, microfabrication.

Jay W. Reddy

Jay received his PhD from Carnegie Mellon in 2021. He has founded a spin off company, Advanced Optronics. He is also a part-time postdoctoral associate working towards developing next generation optical neural interfaces. He is also an expert in neural signal processing.

Achievemnets:

- Richard King Mellon Foundation Presidential Fellowship in Life Sciences 2016-2017

- Ben Cook Presidential Graduate Fellowship 2018-2019

-Dowd Graduate Student Fellowship 2020

-Swartz Innovation Fellowship 2020-202

Research Areas: neural probes, photonics, microfabrication.

Harshvardhan Gupta

Harsh is a postdoctoral associate working on designing optomechanic microsensors for multiplexed neural recording. He received his PhD from Indian Institute of Science in 2023. He is co-advised by Prof. Piazza and Prof. Chamanzar.

Research Areas: MEMS, Photonics, Nanofabrication.

Kanika Sarna

Kanika is a research lab technician working on animal husbandry and biology experiments. She received her Masters degree in Neuroscience from University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.

Research Areas: Neuroscience, Animal care, Calcium imaging.

Graduate Students

PhD:

Zabir Ahmed

Zabir joined the group in 2017. He completed his undergraduate and masters degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET). He is working on next-generation high-density optoelectrical neural interfaces.

Research Areas: Neurophotonics, Optics/Photonics, Novel Neural Recording Techniques

Hassan Malekoshoaraie (Malek)

Hassan joined the team in Fall 2019 as a PhD student. He received his M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Tehran. He was a postgraduate researcher at Harvard-MIT Health Science and Technology (HST) and Boston University working on Biomaterials and Micro/Nanofabrication.

He is working on designing high-density flexible optoelectric neural probes for high resolution recording and optogenetic stimulation of brain activity. He is also working to design and implement skull-like materials for testing novel stimulation and recording paradigms.

Research Areas: Flexible Opto-Electric Neural Probes, Neural Stimulation, Brain Machine Interfaces.

Yufan Zhang

Yufan joined the team as a PhD student in Spring 2020. He completed his undergraduate studies in Materials Science and Engineering at UC Berkeley and received his M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Controls and Robotics at CMU. He is working to design next-generation photonic tactile sensors. He is jointly advised by Profs. Wenzhen Yuan and Maysam Chamanzar.

Research Areas: Optics, Integrated Photonics, Robotic Tactile Sensing.

Sergio Mendez Vargo

Sergio joined the team as a PhD student in Fall 2020. He received his Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Sergio works on designing and fabricating Smart Dura, a novel surface neural interface for chronic recording and stimulation of neural activity in non-human primates. These neural interface include a high density array of recording electrodes and light emitting diodes for bi-directional communication with the brain

Research Areas: Neural Interfaces, Opto-Electric Neural Probes, Brain Machine Interfaces.

Lloyd Lobo

Lloyd joined the group as a PhD student in Fall 21. He completed his undergraduate studies with first-class honours from the City University of Hong Kong in Electronic and Communication Engineering.

He is working on improving medical imaging techniques such as optical coherence tomography (OCT) using acousto-optics.

Research Areas: Optics, Photonics, Imaging, Ultrasonics.

Nacef Guessaymi

Nacef is a PhD student in the Molecular Biophysics and Structural Biology (MBSB) program. He joined the lab in 2021 and is now working on demonstrating high resolution optogenetic stimulation of brain using red-shifted opsins. He is using Parylene photonic waveguides for multi-site stimulation of brain.

Research Areas: Optogenetics, Electrophysiology recording, Histology, Neural signal processing.

Andrew Cochran

Andrew joined the group as a PhD student in Fall 22. He completed his undergraduate studies in Ohio Northern University (ONU), Ada, OH.

He is co-advised by Profs. Maysam Chamanzar and Gian Piazza.

He is working on designing next generation implantable neural probes based on advancements in MEMS and Photonics for massive scaling of neural recordings.

Research Areas: MEMS, Integrated Photonics, Nanofabrication.

Xiang Li

Xiang joined the group as a PhD student in Fall 23 after receiving his Masters degree from CMU. He is working on designing next generation implantable neural probes based on optical multiplexing of neural signals for massive scaling of neural recordings. He is using advanced nanofabrication methods, photonic design and electrophysiology experimentation to design next generation brain interfaces.

Research Areas: Neural engineering, Electrophysiology, Integrated Photonics, Nanofabrication.

Tashfiq Ahmed

Tashfiq joined the group as a PhD student in Fall 23. He completed his undergraduate studies at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology

He is co-advised by Profs. Maysam Chamanzar and Gian Piazza. .

He is working on designing next generation implantable neural probes based on advancements in MEMS and Photonics for massive scaling of neural recordings.

Research Areas: MEMS, Integrated Photonics, Nanofabrication.

Masters:

Ilaria Manneschi

Ilaria joined the group as an ECE Masters student in the summer of 2023. She received her undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering at Northeastern University in 2022. She is working on acoustic-optics imaging techniques, combined with optical coherence tomography (OCT) to image biological tissues.
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Research Areas: Ultrasonics, Optics

Masters:

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Alonso Buitano Tang

Alonso is a 2nd year BME Master’s Student, he joined the lab in Summer 2023. He completed his undergraduate studies in Biomedical Engineering from Universidad Anáhuac in Mexico.
He is working on using acousto-optics with traveling waves to focus light in scattering media that mimic biological tissue.

Research Areas: Ultrasonics, Optics

Masters:

Jiani Chen

Jiani completed her undergraduate studies at the Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA
in Cognitive Science, Biology. She is now actively working on neurobiology experiments and immunohistology to understand the differences and similarities between the effect of electrical and optogenetic stimulation of neural tissue in rodents.

Research Areas: Electrophysiology, Optogenetics, In vivo rodent experiments.

Undergraduate Students

Stella Getz

Stella is a dual major in ECE and BME in her second year of undergraduate study. She joined the lab in June 2020 and is currently working on neural signal processing.

Research Areas: Neural signal processing

Brooke Rodriguez

Brooke is an ECE undergraduate student who is now working on electrochemical polishing of microfabricated neural probes for neural recording from non-human primates.

Research Areas: Nanofabrication, Electrochemical polishing, Neural Engineering

Esther Bedoyan

Esther is a dual major in ECE and Biomedical Engineering. She joined the lab in September 2019 and is currently working on neural signal processing obtained from custom-designed high-density implantable probes.

Research Areas: Neural signal processing

Stephan Pupa

Stephen is a dual major in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Biomedical Engineering in his second year of study. He joined the lab in January 2020 and is currently working on instrumentation for Electrophysiology recording, primarily through characterization of neural probes.

Research Areas: Designing control circuitry for optoelectrical neural interfaces

Madeline (Madi) Davis

Madi is a dual major in Electrical & Computer Engineering and Biomedical Engineering. She joined the lab in June 2020 and is currently working on signal processing of the neural data collected from high-density implantable probes for clinical applications.

Research Areas: Clinical neural probes, Neural signal processing