Engineering foundational neuroscience discoveries to improve lives
The University of Pittsburgh's Neural Engineering Cross-Translation (NEXT) Institute aims to:
- Advance basic science understanding of the nervous system and develop innovative technologies to improve the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of neurological and psychiatric disorders through forward and reverse translational approaches.
- Educate the next generation of leaders in neural engineering through a rigorous and collaborative interdisciplinary program that promotes engagement.
- Foster interdisciplinary collaborations among researchers, clinicians, industry partners, policy makers, humanists, and people with neurological or psychiatric disorders to accelerate the translation of neural engineering research into clinical practice.
- Engage with the community to gain input from stakeholders,and to promote neuroethics and awareness of the importance of neural engineering research for improving human health and well-being.
What is Neural Engineering?
Neural engineering involves electronic and mechanical systems, informatics, imaging, prosthetics, biological and artificial circuits, control systems, tissue engineering and regeneration, modeling, and computation pertinent to the nervous system. Neural Engineers at the University of Pittsburgh are using these techniques to transform lives by engineering scientific discoveries of the nervous system that are translated into human impact.
Who are Pitt’s Neural Engineers?
Neural Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh is interdisciplinary and highly collaborative. Faculty studying neural engineering can be found in the following departments:
- Bioengineering
- Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation
- Radiology
- Neurology
- Neurobiology
- Neurosurgery
- Neuroscience
- And more!
See our faculty directory page for a full list of these individuals and their research interests.
Studying Neural Engineering
A wide and exciting variety of neural engineering research projects are underway in Pittsburgh, which benefits from a history of leadership in neuroscience as well as close collaborations among neuroscientists, bioengineers, and engineers at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University.
For rigorous training in this field, the Department of Bioengineering offers two graduate programs: MS in Neural Engineering and PhD in Bioengineering on the Neural Engineering track. Our graduate students are encouraged to interact with faculty on both campuses and to combine the resources of these institutions for their studies and research.