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John P. Donoghue, Director of the Institute for Brain Science at Brown University, will speak on April 30 at 7PM at Janelia.
John P. Donoghue, Director of the Institute for Brain Science at Brown University, will speak on April 30 at 7PM at Janelia.


Dr. John P. Donoghue, Director of the Institute for Brain Science at Brown University, will deliver a public lecture at Janelia titled, “Into the Heart of the Mind: Neurotechnology to Restore Lost Function.”

Donoghue will speak on Wednesday, April 30, 2014, at 7 p.m. The lecture, part of an ongoing series called “Dialogues of Discovery at Janelia Farm,” is free and open to the public, but tickets are required for admission. Seating is limited to 250 people. Doors will open at 6:30 p.m.

Tickets are now available on a first-come, first-served basis at https://t9.extremetix.com/Online/?siteID=1198external link, opens in a new tab

In his talk, Dr. Donoghue will discuss the relatively new field of neurotechnology, in which researchers are creating devices to treat brain disorders and to restore lost functions, such as sight, hearing or movement. This lecture will describe the current state of brain interfaces for humans and the future of repairing the brain with devices that can read out or write in to our nervous system.

Dr. Donoghue is the Henry Merritt Wriston Professor of Neuroscience and Engineering and Director of the Institute for Brain Science at Brown University. He also leads the Department of Veterans Affairs Center for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology at the Providence VA Medical Center. He was the founding chair of the Department of Neuroscience at Brown and is one of the leaders in developing the university’s widely recognized undergraduate neuroscience curriculum.

His research examines brain mechanisms by which thoughts become actions. He has also translated this fundamental research into novel neurotechnology called BrainGate. BrainGate is a brain-computer interface that uses a tiny chip implanted into the brain to help restore movement and independence for people with paralysis from stroke, spinal cord injury, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, limb loss, or other nervous system disorders. His research has been published in top scientific journals, such as Science and Nature, and his advances have been widely reported in the media, including the BBC, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the television news magazine 60 Minutes.

Dr. Donoghue is a fellow of the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Institute for Medical and Biomedical Engineering. He is also a member of the National Research Advisory Council of the Department of Veterans Affairs and the NIH Working Group for President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative. He has served on numerous advisory boards for the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and NASA. His achievements have been recognized by awards that include the Zülch Prize in Neurology (2007), the Roche-Nature Medicine Prize (2010), the Carmichael Medal, and the Schrödinger Prize (2012).

Recent speakers in the “Dialogues of Discovery” series have included Janelia laboratory head Ulrike Heberlein; Jeremy Nathans, HHMI investigator at Johns Hopkins University; Cori Bargmann, HHMI investigator at Rockefeller University; Jennifer Tour Chayes, Managing Director at Microsoft Research; Sean Eddy, Eric Betzig, and Karel Svoboda, laboratory heads at Janelia; Sir Paul Nurse, President of The Royal Society; Roger Perlmutter, President of Merck Research Laboratories; and Leslie Vosshall, HHMI investigator at Rockefeller University.