Pandarinath Wins NIH New Innovator Award for AI-Powered Brain-Machine Interfaces

Artificial intelligence could be the key to faster, universal interfaces for paralyzed patients

Chethan Pandarinath has won a Director’s New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health to use artificial intelligence tools to create brain-machine interfaces that function with unprecedented speed and accuracy, decoding in real-time what the brain is the telling the body to do. The aim is to reconnect the brain and body for patients paralyzed from strokes, spinal cord injuries, or ALS — amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Part of the NIH’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research program, Pandarinath’s $2.4 million grant will support his team’s launch of a clinical trial, implanting sensors into the brains of ALS patients. He’ll work closely with Emory neurosurgeons Nicholas Au Yong and Robert Gross and neurologist Jonathan Glass, who’s also director of the Emory ALS Center.

More info at https://news.emory.edu/stories/2021/10/nih_pandarinath_new_innovator_award/index.html