A photograph of Paul Middlebrooks and John Ngai conversing on the stage of the auditorium. They are both sitting down with a round table between them. Paul is wearing tan khacki pants and a grey sweatshirt. John is wearing a dark navy blue suit with a light blue button down shirt and a necktie with a white and tan colored pattern. They are both looking at each other and laughing.

BRAIN Initiative Director Visits CMU, Pitt

By Caroline Sheedy Email Caroline Sheedy

Cassia Crogan

John Ngai, director of the National Institutes of Health Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, visited Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh Nov. 21-22 for lab tours, research presentations and a talk with the community held in Mellon Institute. 

The Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC), a partnership of more than 30 years in research and education between the two universities, hosted the visit. More than 50 faculty members at CMU and Pitt have led or co-led BRAIN Initiative research teams.

Ngai joined Congressional staff and university leadership on a tour of the Rehab Neural Engineering Labs (RNEL), a collection of labs at Pitt in the newly constructed UPMC Mercy Pavilion working to improve the quality of life for people with neurological impairments. There, he saw presentations from both CMU and Pitt faculty and students on collaborative work to develop brain-computer interfaces, spinal cord stimulation, deep-brain stimulation, and noninvasive technologies used to measure brain activity.

Sossena Wood presents a new technology to treat psychiatric conditions to a room full of people, who are watching and taking notes.
Sossena Wood (left), an assistant professor of biomedical engineering, demonstrates bias-free, noninvasive technologies used to measure brain activity and blood oxygenation and deliver deep-brain stimulation for the treatment of psychiatric conditions.

Matthew Smith, a professor of biomedical engineering and the Carnegie Mellon Neuroscience Institute and co-director of the CNBC, said that many of the research teams funded by BRAIN are working to develop neurotechnology to enhance the lives of people with devastating health challenges.

“Dr. Ngai got to see work that is poised to make a huge difference to patients with epilepsy, tremors, limb amputations, Parkinson’s disease, communication impairments and spinal cord injuries,” he said.

At the public talk, CMU’s Alison Barth, the Maxwell H. and Gloria C. Connan Professor in the Life Sciences, introduced Ngai. Barth was the first Ph.D. student who graduated from Ngai’s lab, and described the experience of learning to appreciate Ngai’s mentorship when she became an adviser for her own students. Ngai said those mentorship skills remain an important part of his job today. 

“My role as a mentor is to help the mentee find a path to make their ideas a reality, to invest resources into the people doing the work,” Ngai said. 

Aryn Gittis stands next to a screen, which shows a slide about deep-brain stimulation. She gestures toward the screen.
Aryn Gittis, a professor of biological sciences, presented on the use of precision deep-brain stimulation to promote recovery of voluntary movement following damage to motor pathways in the brain and seizure control. 

Ngai offered advice for early career scientists. 

“Twenty years ago, people debated whether we should sequence a genome. Now we have so many tools as a result. It’s a great time for neuroscience today. How you want to pursue your passion depends — it’s just a matter of what’s going to get you up in the morning and make you succeed,” he said.