Dr. Wayne Feng’s Visit to the BRAIN Center

UH BRAIN Center conducted the monthly Cafe meeting with a conversation about global state and future of brain computer interfaces with Dr. Jose Contreras- Vidal.

The IUCRC BRAIN in collaboration with WVU is organizing the Brain-Machine Interface+ Summit, August 10-11, 2024, Morgantown, WV following the IUCRC BRAIN IAB Meeting on August 8-9, Morgantown Marriott at Waterfront Place.

To review the agenda and register for this important international meeting of minds, please check out http://www.bmisummit.org

We are thrilled to present the latest edition of the BRAIN Center Spring Newsletter, packed with exciting updates, achievements, and captivating events. In this edition, you will find a wealth of information covering a wide range of topics, from the remarkable advancements in workforce development to the remarkable accomplishments of our students and faculty members.

We are thrilled to present the latest edition of the BRAIN Center Spring Newsletter, packed with exciting updates, achievements, and captivating events. In this edition, you will find a wealth of information covering a wide range of topics, from the remarkable advancements in workforce development to the remarkable accomplishments of our students and faculty members.

Congratulation to Derek Huber, member of the Non-Invasive Brain Machine Interface Lab, is a recent graduate from UH’s College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics (NSM) at the University of Houston.

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Last Friday, April 21, the BCI & NEUROTECHNOLOGY SPRING SCHOOL 2023 featured a fascinating talk by Dr. Jose M. Azorin

The student BRAIN group is excited to showcase our innovative 3D printed Neural Exo Link device

Alexander Craik is a talented senior doctoral candidate in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Houston.

Last Tuesday, April 4, 2023, the UH BMI Lab had the honor of hosting former Cougar football player Bernard Giddings (#17).

The BRAIN Center Spring Newsletter is out. Check it out to get the latest updates on NSAP and REU Students 2023, student awards, events focused on the brain’s interaction with dance, music, and more exciting insights and events.

Meet Axel Amisaday Mendoza Armenta, a senior Biomedical Engineering student with a strong interest in neuroengineering.

Meet Maxine Annel Pacheco Ramírez, an accomplished 8th-semester undergraduate biomedical engineering student at Tec de Monterrey

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Meet Cecilia Orozco Romo! She’s a 22-year-old biomedical engineering student.

Meet Benicio Sanchez Frausto, a 6th-semester biomedical engineering student, and research assistant at BRAIN

Meet Fernanda Garibay, a 6th-semester student of biomedical engineering and research assistant at BRAIN.

Meet Milton Osiel Candela Leal, a 21-year-old student pursuing his 6th semester in Biomedical Engineering at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Monterrey.

Meet Nancy Tijerina Huerta, a research assistant currently working on the Neurohumanities Lab project.

llow us to introduce you to Rebeca Mellado, a fourth-semester biomedical engineering student, and research assistant in the Neurohumanities LAB project.

Say hello to Salma Ruiz, a 6th-semester Biomedical Engineering student and a research assistant in the Neurohumanities Lab project

Meet Paulina Remis Serna, an eighth-semester student in the Biomedical Engineering program at Tecnologico de Monterrey

Meet Valeria Leija, a dedicated biomedical engineering student currently in her sixth semester at Tecnológico de Monterrey.

We are excited to announce our partnership with MyACTome™, an innovative smartphone-based software solution that provides personalized fall risk assessment and monitoring.

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Unique collaboration, the performance will delve into the neural synchrony between performers and changes in brain activity

February 24 and 25, 2023

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We are bringing together a diverse range of engineers to showcase the incredible careers available in the field of engineering.

Attention Engineers! Engineers in Real Life (Engineers IRL) is back and looking for participants for our 2023 in-person event. Join us and share your knowledge and experience with the next generation of engineers. Show students the exciting careers available in the world of engineering. All specialties and backgrounds are welcome. Make a positive impact and […]

The National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) for BuildingReliable Advances and Innovations in Neurotechnology (BRAIN) held an Interim Industry Advisory BoardMeeting on January 27, 2023. The meeting brought together leading experts from industry and academia to review the researchaccomplishments of the center and provide valuable input for future developments. The discussionscentered around the […]

Vangeline Theater/ New York Butoh Institute announces a free public showing of The Slowest Wave/Butoh and The Brain, the culmination of an art-science performance-research study, on February 10, 2023 at 6pm at University of Houston, Student Center South Theater, 4455 University Dr #103/203, Houston, TX.  For more information and to RSVP, visit https://butohandthebrain.eventbrite.com. This showing […]

Are you a post-baccalaureate student in the fields of science, bioengineering, neuroscience, or at theUniversity of Houston IUCRC BRAIN Center medicine? Want to gain specialized technical skills to studythe brain and advance your career in neurorehabilitation and neuroengineering research? Join the Neuromotor Skill Advancement for Post-baccalaureates (NSAP) program at the University ofHouston IUCRC BRAIN Center! […]

Research Experience for Undergraduates in Neurotechnologies (REU) at the University of Houston IUCRC BRAIN Center Are you interested in gaining research experience in engineering? Want to make a difference in the livesof people with disabilities?Join the REU Neurotechnologies Program at the University of Houston’s Cullen College of EngineeringIUCRC BRAIN Center in the summer and fall […]

NEUROHUMANITIES LAB Engaging Experiences for Human Flourishing (office.com)Creation of a scenic space for interaction, experimentation, and immersion with cultural objects through extended Reality (xR) implemented by computer systems and neuroscientific analysis in the context of a Digital Humanities methodology. As a result, the project generates new databases and analyzes their capability of measuring and evaluating the impact of humanistic resources on people’s health and cognitive improvement, in order to achieve their flourishing (Tay […]

Diabelli 200, marks the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, and in collaboration with music composer Anthony Brandt and neuro-engineer Dr. Pepe Contreras-Vidal will explore the neural synchrony between the performers and changes in brain activity throughout the performance. Brandt will use Diabelli’s waltz and Beethoven’s approach to the variations as inspiration for excerpts of […]

The Slowest Wave This art-science performance investigates the brain dynamics of dancers while they are performing Butoh, a type of postmodern dance that originated in Japan, through the use of EEG Brain Waves. February 10, 2023, at the University of Houston Student Center South Theater, Houston 

Researchers Awarded for Prosthetic Arm DesignGerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design industrial design students David Edquilang (’22) and Niell Gorman (’21), along with Assistant Professor and BRAIN Center member Jeff Feng, received a 2022 International Design Excellence Award. The group designed a more affordable prosthetic arm, fashioned in part using 3D scanning and virtual reality.  Two of the […]

Get Your Neuromotors Running: NIH Grant Awarded to UH Professors Another collaborative effort among the University of Houston faculty is being recognized by the National Institutes of Health. Health and Human Performance Associate Professor Pranav J. Parikh and Cullen College of Engineering Professor Jose Luis Contreras-Vidal have been awarded the NIH R25 Research Education grant titled “Neuromotor […]

Profs. Jose Contreras-Vidal and Stuart Long from the Cullen College of Engineering have been awarded a $402K award from the National Science Foundation to continue their highly successful REU Site themed “Neurotechnologies to Help the Body Move, Heal and Feel Again.” This STEAM training grant will provide opportunities for a diverse group of undergraduate and […]

Faculty, students, industry, and federal agency representatives from the University of Houston, Arizona State University, Georgia Tech, West Virginia University, Tec de Monterrey (Mexico), and Miguel Hernandez de Elche (Spain) met on August-4-5, 2022 at the University of Houston to kick-start our Phase 2 (2022-2027) Industry-University Cooperative Research Center for Building Reliable Advances and Innovations […]

Alexander Steele, a PhD candidate in the Non-invasive Brain-Machine Interface lab at the University of Houston, was selected as one of five DARPA Riser’s to give a 5-minute talk on his dissertation research entitled, “Decoding the language of the spinal cord using non-invasive methods”. DARPA Risers are up-and-coming standouts in their fields, whose research is related […]

Profs. Jose Contreras-Vidal and Stuart Long from the Cullen College of Engineering have been awarded a $402K award from the National Science Foundation to continue their highly successful REU Site themed “Neurotechnologies to Help the Body Move, Heal and Feel Again.” This STEAM training grant will provide opportunities for a diverse group of undergraduate and […]

Faculty, students, industry and federal agency representatives from the University of Houston, Arizona State University, Georgia Tech, West Virginia University, Tec de Monterrrey (Mexico) and Miguel Hernandez de Elche (Spain) met on August-4-5, 2022 at the University of Houston to kick-start our Phase 2 (2022-2027) Industry-University Cooperative Research Center for Building Reliable Advances and Innovations […]

The 5-years $768,000 NIH training award on “Neuromotor Skill Advancement for Post-baccalaureates (NSAP)” will provide didactic, hands-on activities focusing on the development of highly sought-after technical neuromotor skills to study and treat the brain. This is an initiative of the BRAIN Center and a collaboration between the Cullen College of Engineering and the College of […]

Name of the Article Distinct Kinematic and Neuromuscular Activation Strategies in Response to Postural Perturbations in Healthy Individuals Fitted With and Without a Lower-limb Exoskeleton List of authors Charles S. Layne1, 2*, Christopher A. Malaya2 , Akshay S. Ravindran3 , Isaac John2 , Gerard E. Francisco4 , Jose L. Contreras-Vidal3 Affiliations 1 University of Houston, […]

Arizona State University, an IUCRC BRAIN Site, has been named a Hispanic-Serving Institution by the U.S. Department of Education. Hispanic-Serving Institutions are defined as institutions that enroll a minimum of 25% full-time undergraduate Latinx students. ASU began exceeding this threshold with its immersion (on-campus) undergraduate population in the fall of 2019 and has continued to […]

University of Houston creative writing professor and award-winning author Cristina Rivera Garza is one of only 10 recipients of the Berlin Prize for spring 2023. The semester-long fellowship is awarded annually to top-tier scholars, writers, composers and artists who are from or live in the United States. “This is such a prestigious award, one that […]

The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Senior Member Advisory Committee and Board of Directors recently elected IUCRC BRAIN faculty member and Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design industrial design associate professor Jeff Feng to the Class of 2022 NAI Senior Members for his success in licensing, patents, and commercialization, as well as producing […]

On Thursday, May 19th, the UH Noninvasive Brain Machine Interface Systems Lab hosted members of the Houston area American Association of University Women and the Houston area Rotary’s chair of Polio Plus:  Susan Boone Susan Dunten Janice Teske Pamela Ossorio Carolyn Morris Rose Ennis Pat and Monte Farnell Karen North Wayne Staton  We enjoyed showing […]

On Thursday, Chairman of the UH System Board of Regents and his family made a $50 million gift to the College of Medicine. In return, the University of Houston College of Medicine will now be known as the Tilman J. Fertitta Family College of Medicine. This is a transformational gift that will not only strengthen […]

Alexander Steele is currently a Ph.D. candidate and also a research assistant at the Noninvasive Brain-Machine Interface Systems Laboratory under the supervision of Dr. Jose L. Contreras-Vidal. He is a U.S. Marine Corps Veteran with an inspiring story of fighting adversity. He has been selected as a DARPA Riser. DARPA Riser is a highly competitive […]

Paras Gupta, a former BRAIN REU undergraduate student, got accepted into Texas A&M’s Engineering Medicine Program (EnMed). EnMed is a unique and newer medical school in Houston, integrating Engineering Design principles into the typical medical school curriculum. He will be graduating with both a Medical Doctorate (MD) and a Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) in Biomedical […]

Dr. Jose L. Contreras-Vidal, Director of NSF IUCRC BRAIN Phase 2 and Laboratory for Noninvasive Brain-Machine Interface Systems at the University of Houston will, be speaking on May 12th, 2022, at Rice University Neuroengineering Conference: Restoring and Extending the Human Brain, Houston, TX. The conference is designed to bring together researchers, engineers, clinicians, and entrepreneurs. […]

University of Houston BRAIN Faculty Member Dr. Saurabh Prasad has received a grant of $561 thousand from NASA for a project called “Knowledge Transfer for Robust GeoAI Across Space, Sensors and Time via Active Deep Learning”. The project, in collaboration with Purdue, will advance the frontier of deep active learning and knowledge transfer to facilitate […]

On April 23, 2022, a group of about thirty students ranging from middle and high school participated in ASME sponsored, Introduction to Cougar Engineering event. The event included a 30-minute tour of the IUCRC BRAIN site at the University of Houston. The lab host, Alexander Steele, with the assistance of Michelle Patrick-Krueger, provided insight into […]

Steele knew that his unique life experience and perspective could help when it came to innovating the technology. n August 2018, Steele joined Contreras-Vidal’s lab as a National Science Foundation Veteran Research Fellow. The following year, he was chosen as a University of Houston and Houston Methodist Research Institute Graduate Fellow In Translational Research. As […]

World Premiere of LiveWire, and innovative collaboration between scientists, musicians and dancers.
Presentations January 21, 2022 and Januarry 22, 2022 at 7:30 PM CST

The status of the program is currently dependent on NSF renewal of our REU Site. Please check for updates in February or March.

New Faculty Video

This app measures baseline walking speed and stabilization of how people walk, and if the baseline changes a warning is issued. Lockhart said it is most helpful for the phone to be on constantly on so a daily motion pattern is established.

Dr. Zhu Han, Moores Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is one of three UH researchers recognized for frequent citations during the last decade.

A recently published paper from a team of researchers and students from multiple departments at the Cullen College of Engineering and the McGovern Medical School at UTHealth proposes a way to provide real-time, continuous tracking for the 50 million people living with potential seizures from epilepsy world-wide.

UH BRAIN Center started an initiative at University of Houston for breakfast meetings in which faculty conduct brainstorming for new research ideas, while promoting faculty collaboration and team building

Spring 2022-Fall 2022
Open positions for new officer roles- December 15th, 2021
With the year nearing closer to the end and the natural graduation cycles reoccurring, we’d like to encourage any members interested in taking on the following officer roles to reach out to us, specifically for the next year (Spring 2022-Fall 2022).

Ioannis Pavlidis, BRAIN Faculty at University of Houston was invited by the Science magazine to participate in a panel discussion on rarity.

Open day Webinar- Network n+i for students interested in studying engineering in France.

Economical, Ultra-sensitive Biosensing in Point-of-Care Applications

IAB BRAIN Industry Member

November 8-9

November 22 and 23, 2021, IBERDISCAP
Ibero-American Congress of Technologies to support Disabilities

Dear BRAIN Student Group members, Are you a recent or prospective graduate planning your career after your M.S. and Ph.D.? Then this event is for you! In association with the BRAIN center at the University of Houston, we are delighted to invite you to our panel discussion and networking event focusing on careers after your graduation. Significantly, […]

Researchers from Arizona State University, the University of Houston, Barrow Neurological Institute [BNI], Phoenix, AZ, TIRR Memorial Hermann, Fourier Intelligence and Harmonic Bionics will investigate whether robotic therapies for stroke patients will provide greater benefits than conventional therapies.

TUCSON, AZ, July 27, 2021 – ZelosDx, Inc. announced today that the company is the recipient of a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase l Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a grant entitled, “ Phagocytic Cells in Peripheral Blood as a Novel Diagnostic Tool for Brain Health”.

Jose “Pepe” Luis Contreras-Vidal, Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor and the Director of the NSF IUCRC BRAIN Center, has been asked to serve on the National Advisory Board on Medical Rehabilitation Research (NABMRR) for the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

During 10 weeks of the summer 2021, our REU program has welcomed a total of 25 students

The Pediatric Lower-Extremity Gait System (P-LEGS) is a modular device with a total of six motors that provide sagittal plane support in the hip, knee and ankle joints of each leg.

“EEG assessment of central sensory network coding during non-invasive spinal stimulation” and I was poster number 9023

Researchers from the Cullen College of Engineering, including doctoral student Hamid Fekri Azgomi, are exploring ways to automate the administration of medicine for patients suffering from Cushing’s syndrome, with a proposal establishing architecture for that recently published in Frontiers in Neuroscience.

Rose Faghih, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, is reporting the first steps toward monitoring brain responses using wearable devices.

Thurmon Lockhart has been named the first Musculoskeletal Orthopedic Research and Education, or MORE, Foundation Professor of Life in Motion. Lockhart’s innovative biomechanics research

Closed-loop Brain-Computer Interface (BMI) trains an AI model to create audio-visual digital painting from the brain activity of the artist during performance.

A four-person team of students at the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering has won a pair of awards for their project – a soft robotics exoskeleton – after presenting at the Excellence in Senior Design competition, held virtually by the University of Texas at Dallas on May 21. 

For four days at the Water Park Works at Sabine Street one of many modules of the course ECE 5397/6397 offered a workshop Yoga, Meditation and the BRAIN.

Geraldina Interiano-Wise, Uh College of Engineering Artist-in Residence, performs a live art -neuroscience production of the  Nahual Project at the Moody Center at Rice

Researchers in Houston and elsewhere have shown that robotic systems controlled by the user’s own brain activity can help patients recovering from stroke and other disabling injuries.  But the demonstrations have taken place in highly controlled settings, and none of the systems have been approved for use in clinics or patient’s homes. Read more here

David Eguren, a BRAIN graduate student mentored by Prof. Jose Contreras-Vidal won the 2019 BRAIN Initiative PI Meeting Trainee Travel Awardee at the Fifth BRAIN Initiative PI Meeting in Washington DC

In June, a diverse group of engineers, biomedical researchers, artists and clinicians gathered in Cancun, Mexico for the 2019 International Graphonomics Conference on Mobile Brain-Body Imaging, Neuroscience of Art, Innovation and Creativity.

Human brain interfaces are changing the way we think about prosthetics. Photo courtesy of the project “Your Brain on Art

Stroke survivors who had ceased to benefit from conventional rehabilitation gained clinically significant arm movement and control by using an external robotic device powered by the patients’ own brains.

The results of the clinical trial were described in the journal NeuroImage: Clinical.

Jose “Pepe” Luis Contreras-Vidal, Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor and the Director of the NSF IUCRC BRAIN Center, has been asked to serve on the National Advisory Board on Medical Rehabilitation Research (NABMRR) for the National Institutes of Health (NIH).