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.

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.

Research Staff and Postdocs

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.

Graduate Students

PhD:

Matteo G. Scopelliti

Matteo joined the team in Fall 2016 as a PhD student. He received his M.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering at Polytechnic University of Turin, Italy in 2015. He was a visiting graduate student at UC Berkeley from February until July 2015 working on neural probe characterization.

He completed his undergrad studies majoring in Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science in 2012 (full mark with honors).

Achievements:

-James Sprague Presidential Fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University 2019-2020

-IEEE BRAIN Best Paper Award, first place, NER19.

Research Areas: Acoustic-optic neural simulation, Optical techniques for Deep Brain Stimulation, Parkinson's disease therapeutics.

Jay W. Reddy

Jay joined the team as a PhD student in Fall 2016. He has completed his undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley majoring both in EECS and Mathematics.

He has been working on the designed and implementation of Parylene Photonics, a novel fully flexible photonic platform.

Achievements:

- 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 2020-2021

Research Areas: Parylene Photonics, Optical Neural Probes, Flexible Opto-Electric Neural Probes

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

Yasin Karimi

Yasin joined the group in August 2017. He completed his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering at Sharif University of Technology.

Yasin works on novel beam steering techniques in turbid media using acoustic-optics. He has also been working on designing a novel device platform for neural recording using optic-mechanical resonant structures.

Achievements:

-IEEE BRAIN Best Paper Award, first place, NER19.

Research Areas: Optics and Photonics, Ultrasonics, Neural Technologies.

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.

Vahid Hassanzade

Vahid joined the group as a PhD student in Spring 2021. He completed his undergraduate studies in Electrical Engineering at Amirkabir University of Technology (AUT) with a minor in Physics.

He is working on designing neural interfaces for high resolution chronic recording and stimulation of neural activity in non-human primates. He is designing integrated polymer photonics for high resolution optogenetic stimulation.

Research Areas: Neurophotonics, Integrated Optics, Neural Probes.

Hossein Baktash

Hossein joined the team as a PhD student in Summer 2021. He completed his undergraduate studies in Sharif University of Technology, Iran with a major in Computer Engineering and minor in Mathematics.

He is working on using ultrasound to create virtual optical waveguides and lenses inside the tissue. He is also working on computational and image processing techniques to enhance the imaging capabilities of virtual lenses for neural imaging.

Research Areas: Ultrasound, Optical imaging, Non-invasive neural interfaces.

Masters:

Chun-Wei Wu

Chun-Wei (Kevin) is a first-year BME Masters Student. Kevin joined the lab in September 2020. He completed his undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering at University of Connecticut in 2019. He is currently working on using acoustic-optics technique to focus light in biological tissues.

Research Areas: Ultrasonics, Optics, Neural Engineering

Masters:

Manash Pratim Barman

Manash is a first-year ECE Masters Student. He joined the team in September 2019. He is currently working on Neural Data Analysis. He has experience working on Natural Language Processing, Antenna Design and Wireless Communications.

Research Areas: Neural signal analysis, Machine learning

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

Mona Yuan

Mona is a Neurobiology undergraduate currently in her first year of study. She joined the lab in January 2020 and is currently working on performing mouse brain slice experiments with upconverting nanoparticles for optogenetic stimulation of the brain deep inside the tissue.

Research Areas: Neurobiology, Optogenetics

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