Welcome to
Biomedical Engineering

Dr. José del R. Millán is a professor and holds the Carol Cockrell Curran Chair in the Chandra Family Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. He is also a professor in the Department of Neurology at Dell Medical School and faculty of the Mulva Clinic for the Neurosciences. He is co-director of the UT CARE Initiative and associate director of Texas Robotics.

He received a PhD in computer science from the Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, in 1992. Prior to joining UT Austin, he was a research scientist at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission in Ispra (Italy) and a senior researcher at the Idiap Research Institute in Martigny (Switzerland). He has also been a visiting scholar at the Universities of Berkeley and Stanford as well as at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley. Most recently, he was Defitech Foundation Chair in Brain-Machine Interface at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland (EPFL), where he helped establish the Center for Neuroprosthetics.

Dr. Millán has made several seminal contributions to the field of brain-machine interfaces (BMI), especially based on electroencephalogram signals. Most of his achievements revolve around the design of brain-controlled robots. He has received several recognitions for these seminal and pioneering achievements, notably the IEEE-SMC Nobert Wiener Award in 2011, elevation to IEEE Fellow in 2017, and elected Fellow of the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering in 2020. In addition to his work on the fundamentals of BMI and design of neuroprosthetics, Dr. Millán is prioritizing the translation of BMI to people who live with motor and cognitive disabilities. In parallel, he is designing BMI technology to offer new interaction modalities for able-bodied people that augment their abilities.

Research Areas

bioECE

Decision, Information, and Communications Engineering (DICE)

Research Interests

• Brain-machine Interfaces (BMI)
• Neuroengineering
• Neuroprosthetics
• Human-robot interaction
• Statistical machine learning
• Neuroscience
• Neurorehabilitation

Research Groups

Clinical Neuroprosthetics and Brain Interaction Lab

Wireless Networking and Communications Group (WNCG)

Texas Robotics

Cellular to Clinically Applied Rehabilitation Research and Engineering (CARE)

Additional Links

Group Website

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

Immunoengineering, Biomaterials, Nanomedicine, Drug Discovery & Delivery, Cell & Tissue Engineering, Biomaterials

RESEARCH FOCUS

Research in the Yin lab focuses on employing a biomaterials-centric approach to elucidate the key mechanism for potentiating or diversifying the immune responses, and in parallel, to precisely modulate the immune system and create new immunotherapies against cancer and infectious diseases. The lab will leverage cutting-edge technologies in synthetic chemistry, materials science, nanotechnology, systems immunology, and organoid models to advance developments in cancer immunotherapy and anti-viral vaccines. Our ultimate goal is to translate these new technologies and therapies for clinical applications.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

RELATED WEBSITES:

Laboratory of Biomaterials for Immunoengineering

Lief Ericsson Fenno, M.D., Ph.D., is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Dell Medical School and an assistant professor of neuroscience in the College of Natural Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin. 

Fenno received his bachelor’s degree in neurobiology from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience and M.D. from Stanford University School of Medicine. He completed the Adult Psychiatry Residency at Stanford Hospital and clinics, and he is board-certified in adult psychiatry by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Additionally, he completed postdoctoral training in bioengineering at Stanford University.

His clinical specialty is the medical management of addiction, with a focus on the use of medication-assisted treatment, including buprenorphine and methadone, for the treatment of opioid use disorder.

RESEARCH INTERESTS:

Leveraging his strengths in neuroscience research and bioengineering, his scientific goal is to design, construct, validate and apply novel molecular and viral tools to understand the brain in health and disease for the benefit of diverse patient populations. His specific research interests include the development and application of novel molecular tools that enable precision manipulation of targeted neuron populations in awake, behaving subjects.

Fenno directs a laboratory focused on expanding the use of novel molecular and viral approaches, with the objective of precisely establishing links between neuron circuitry and behavior.

Laboratory Website

Selected Publications

Selected Publications

RESEARCH FOCUS:
Translational neuroscience research in the field of neurotrauma.

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Dr. Noble is working to develop targeted therapeutics that will improve recovery after traumatic spinal cord and pediatric brain injuries. Her research relies on cellular, molecular and behavioral tools to identify key mechanisms underlying early cell injury that impair recovery processes in preclinical models of neurotrauma. This multifaceted approach has led to the discovery of new pharmacologic and stem-cell based therapeutics that ameliorate several key features of spinal cord injury; namely, bladder and locomotor dysfunction and central neuropathic pain.

More recent research includes a novel model of concussion to the gyrencephalic adolescent brain where the early immune response may render the brain more vulnerable to repeat insults. In addition, she is addressing the cross-talk between the injured pediatric brain and the microbiome which may give rise to long-term changes in social behaviors.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Research Focus

Novel MRI methods. Novel blood flow and oximetry methods in cardiovascular disease, anemic disorders and cancer. 

Research Interests

Adam Bush develops, validates, and applies novel MRI methods to explore human pathophysiology and make imaging safer, particularly for children. His lab combines engineering, physiology, and medicine to pursue novel blood flow and oximetry methods in disease. 

Selected Publications