Faculty
Maryam Shanechi
Maryam Shanechi is Dean’s Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Neuroscience, Computer Science, and Biomedical Engineering at USC. She is also the Founding Director of the new USC Center for Neurotechnology. She joined USC as Assistant Professor in July 2014. Prior to that, she was Assistant Professor at Cornell University’s ECE department in 2014. She received the B.A.Sc. degree with honors in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto in 2004 and the S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2006 and 2011, respectively. She works at the interface of machine learning, statistical inference, and control to develop neurotechnology and study the brain through decoding and control of neural dynamics. Her work has led to closed-loop brain-machine interfaces (BMI) for motor function and for deep brain stimulation to treat neuropsychiatric disorders. She is also the PI of a joint US/UK multidisciplinary university research initiative (MURI) to lead the development of multiscale BMIs.
Awards: NIH Director’s New Innovator (DP2) | NSF CAREER | ONR Young Investigator | ASEE’s Curtis W. McGraw Research Award | MIT Technology Review TR35: World’s Top 35 Innovators Under 35 | Popular Science Brilliant 10 | Science News’ SN10 | One Mind Rising Star | DoD joint US-UK MURI | DoD US-UK BARI | NAE frontiers | NAE frontiers invited organizer/session chair | NAS frontiers invited speaker/session chair | Blavatnik National Awards Finalist | IEEE Fellow.
Research Associate
Omid G. Sani
Omid G. Sani is a Research Associate and former PhD student in the Shanechi lab. He is interested in developing developing machine learning method for modeling neural-behavioral data, and in developing closed-loop control systems for neuromodulation to treat neuropsychiatric disorders. He received a B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering and an M.Sc. degree in Biomedical Engineering both from Sharif University of Technology, in 2013 and 2015 respectively. He started his PhD at USC in 2015 and received the Annenberg fellowship. He was selected as an MHI scholar at USC in 2019. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from USC in 2020 and won the Best Doctoral Dissertation Award at USC Viterbi School of Engineering.
Postdoctoral Scholar
Han-Lin Hsieh
Han-Lin Hsieh is a Postdoctoral Scholar and former PhD student in the Shanechi lab. His research focuses on the design of closed-loop brain-machine interface control architectures for motor function. He received a B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from the National Taiwan University. He received the Viterbi fellowship at USC and he received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from USC in 2020.
HyeongChan Jo
HyeongChan Jo is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Shanechi lab. His research focuses on the design of models of stimulation effect on various brain states such as depression. He received a B.Sc. degree in Bio and Brain Engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in 2015. He received his PhD in Bioengineering from Caltech in 2021.
Danil Tyulmankov
Danil Tyulmankov is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Shanechi lab. His research focuses on the design of mathematical tools for computational neuroscience. He received a B.Sc. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his PhD in Theoretical Neuroscience from Columbia University.
Graduate Students
Nitin Sadras
Nitin Sadras is a Ph.D. student in the ECE department at USC. He received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley.
Parima Ahmadipouranari
Parima Ahmadipour is a Ph.D. student in the ECE department at USC. She received her B.Sc. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Physics from Sharif University of Technology in 2014 and a M.Sc. degree in Neural Engineering and Neurosciences with a minor in Computational Neuroscience from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in 2017.
Parsa Vahidi
Parsa Vahidi is a Ph.D. student in the ECE department USC. He received his B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 2019.
DongKyu Kim
DongKyu Kim is a Ph.D. student in the ECE Department at USC. He received a B.E. degree in Electrical Engineering, and a M.E. degree in Electrical engineering from The Cooper Union in 2019.
Yanyu Li
Yanyu Li is a Ph.D. student in the ECE Department at USC. He received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Tsinghua University in 2018. He received the Annenberg fellowship from USC in 2019.
Eray Erturk
Eray Erturk is a PhD student in the ECE Department at USC. He received his B.S. degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Bilkent University, Turkey in 2020.
Lucine Oganesian
Lucine Oganesian is a Ph.D. student in the ECE Department at USC. She received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from UC Berkeley in 2016. She worked as a software engineer at Google for 4 years before starting her Ph.D. at USC. When not at her computer, she can be found in the kitchen or at a park training capoeira.
Trisha Jani
Trisha Jani is a Ph.D. student in the ECE Department at USC. She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2018 and 2020 respectively. She received the Viterbi Graduate School Fellowship from USC in 2020. Trisha is interested in using machine learning and signal processing to address neuroscience problems.
Enes Burak Bilgin
Enes Burak Bilgin is a Ph.D. student in the ECE department at USC. He received his B.S. degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Bilkent University, Turkey in 2020.
Sayed Mohammad Hosseini
Sayed Mohammad Hosseini is a Ph.D. student in the ECE department at USC. He received his B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 2022.
Parastoo Azizeddin
Parastoo Azizeddin is a Ph.D. student in the ECE department at USC. She received her B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 2022.
Daniel Jilani
Daniel Jilani is a Ph.D. student in the ECE department at USC. He received his B.Sc. degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from UC Irvine in 2023.
Saba Hashemi
Saba Hashemi is a Ph.D. student in the CS department at USC. She received her B.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 2023.
Kiarash Vaziri
Kiarash Vaziri is a Ph.D. student in the ECE department at USC. He received his B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology in 2023.
Lab Alumni
Yuxiao Yang
Yuxiao Yang was a Postdoctoral Scholar and PhD student in the Shanechi Lab at USC, obtaining his PhD in 2019. He is now an Assistant Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Central Florida.
Christoph Schneider
Christoph Schneider was a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Shanechi Lab at USC. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.
Ramin Bighamian
Ramin Bighamian was a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Shanechi Lab at USC. He is currently a Staff Fellow at the at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Allison Connolly
Allison Connolly was a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Shanechi Lab at USC. She is currently an associate director at Abbott.
Christian Song
Christian Song was a Ph.D. student in the Shanechi Lab at USC, obtaining his PhD in 2023. He is now an R&D Engineer at Sony.
Salar Abbaspourazad
Salar Abbaspourazad was a Ph.D. student in the Shanechi Lab at USC, obtaining his PhD in 2022. He is now a Machine Learning Scientist at Apple.
Chuanmeizhi Wang
Chuanmeizhi Wang was a Ph.D. student in the Shanechi Lab at USC, obtaining his PhD in 2022.
Mustafa Avcu
Mustafa Talha Avcu was a graduate research assistant in the Shanechi Lab at USC. He is now a software development engineer at Amazon.
Rahul Manmadhan Nair
Rahul Manmadhan Nair was a graduate research assistant in the Shanechi Lab at USC. He is now a senior system engineer at Qualcomm.
Haoyan Xu
Haoyan Xu was a graduate research assistant in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at USC.
Tsam Kiu Pun
Tsam-Kiu Pun was an undergraduate researcher in the Shanechi Lab at USC. She is now a PhD candidate in the BrainGate team, Brown University.
Isabel Díaz Miranda
Isabel Díaz Miranda was a visiting undergraduate researcher from ITAM (Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México).