Sergey Stavisky, PhD

Assistant Professor, Department of Neurological Surgery

University of California, Davis

Dr. Stavisky is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Davis, where he co-directs the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab. He works at the intersection of systems and computational neuroscience, neuroengineering, and machine learning. Dr. Stavisky trying to understand how the brain controls speech and arm/hand movements, and to use this knowledge to build brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) that treat brain injury and disease. His current primary focus areas are 1) building BCIs to restore lost speech and reach and grasp movements, 2) understanding how multiple cortical and subcortical areas prepare and execute speech and reach and grasp movements, and 3) developing and testing next-generation human-use intracortical electrophysiology probes that will allow for recording from and writing to many more neurons than currently possible.

Dr. Stavisky received his Sc.B. from Brown University in 2008, after which he was a research engineer in the BrainGate group at Brown/MGH/Providence VA for 2 years. He received his Ph.D. in Neurosciences from Stanford University in 2016, where he studied motor cortical control of reaching and developed brain-computer interfaces in a preclinical non-human primate model. He then pursued postdoctoral training in the Stanford Neural Prosthetics Translational Laboratory, where he focused on both the scientific and engineering challenges necessary to develop BCIs to restore the ability of clinical trial participants to speak and make reach and grasp movements. Selected awards and honors include: postdoctoral fellowship awards from the ALS Association (2016-2018), the A. P. Giannini Foundation (2018-2021), the Stanford Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute (2018-2020; a Career Award at the Scientific Interface from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund (2019); the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award from Stanford University School of Medicine (2013); 1st place in the Annual BCI Award (2019); the Regeneron Prize for Creative Innovation (2021); and a Pilot Award from the Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain (2021-2023).

Partner Institutions

Brown Emory University Harvard Medical School MGH Stanford School of Medicine University of California, Davis DVA