Darrel R. Deo, Ph.D. is an instructor and research scientist in Stanford University’s School of
Medicine with the Neural Prosthetics Translational Laboratory (NPTL), working with Drs. Jaimie
Henderson and Frank Willett. He studies how the body is represented in human motor cortex and
builds real-time implantable brain–computer interface (iBCI) systems using machine learning,
along with precision neuroimaging approaches that support surgical targeting and functional
mapping.

Previously, Darrel was a senior clinical scientist at Synchron, where he supported an early
feasibility iBCI study spanning protocol development, regulatory submissions, behavioral
experiment design, data analysis, and scientific communications. Prior to that, he was a
postdoctoral fellow in Stanford’s Department of Neurosurgery & BrainGate (advised by Drs.
Krishna Shenoy and Jaimie Henderson), where he studied complex and whole-body movement
representations and developed real-time decoding methods, including neural network–based
decoders.

Darrel earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University (co-advised
by Drs. Krishna Shenoy, Jaimie Henderson, and Allison Okamura) and a B.S. in Robotics
Engineering from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has been recognized with the Wu
Tsai Neurosciences Institute Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and an NSF Graduate Research
Fellowship, among other awards.