BCI/Neurotech People to Follow
A curated list of journalists, reporters, researchers, analysts, content creators, and thought leaders covering brain-computer interfaces and neurotechnology. Biased toward industry coverage; greedy for broad knowledge.
Journalists & Beat Reporters
People whose job it is to cover this space at major publications. These are your primary signal sources.
| Name | Outlet | Focus | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emily Mullin | WIRED | BCI, biotech, brain implants. Has covered the space since 2017 across MIT Tech Review, OneZero, and now Wired. One of the most experienced reporters on the commercial BCI beat. | WIRED profile · X |
| Antonio Regalado | MIT Technology Review | Senior biomedicine editor. Covers Neuralink, BrainGate, and the broader clinical BCI landscape. Deep, skeptical reporting on hype vs. reality. | MIT Tech Review · X |
| Angie Voyles Askham | The Transmitter | Senior reporter covering systems neuroscience and U.S. federal research funding. PhD in neuroscience. Tracks the BRAIN Initiative, NIH cuts, and policy shifts affecting neurotech. | The Transmitter · LinkedIn |
| Anil Oza | STAT News | General assignment reporter covering neuroscience and brain implants. STAT is the go-to outlet for BCI clinical/regulatory journalism. | STAT profile |
| Emily Waltz | IEEE Spectrum | Covers neurotechnology, neuromodulation, and bioelectronic medicine from an engineering angle. Long track record at IEEE with deep technical reporting. | IEEE Spectrum |
| Claudia López Lloreda | The Transmitter | Reporter covering neuroscience. Part of the Transmitter’s expanding neurotech-adjacent coverage. | The Transmitter |
| Grace Wade | New Scientist | Covers public health, nutrition, and biotechnology, including neurotechnology developments. | New Scientist |
Worth monitoring at these outlets
- STAT News - The strongest outlet for BCI clinical and regulatory stories. Their neuroscience topic page is a must-bookmark.
- The Transmitter - Simons Foundation-backed neuroscience publication. Deep reporting on the research pipeline that feeds BCI. thetransmitter.org
- MIT Technology Review - Regalado’s biomedicine beat is the best single-reporter source for BCI industry context. technologyreview.com
- WIRED - Mullin’s coverage bridges consumer tech audiences and BCI science. wired.com/tag/brain-computer-interface
- IEEE Spectrum - Engineering-first perspective on neurotech. spectrum.ieee.org
Newsletters & Industry Analysts
Consistent, curated coverage you can subscribe to. These are often more information-dense than mainstream outlets.
| Name | Publication | Focus | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Naveen Rao | Neurotech Futures (Substack) | The leading neurotechnology industry newsletter (~3,900+ readers). Biweekly digests covering funding, FDA actions, commercial deals, research papers, and industry events. Also publishes member-only “Signals” analysis. Essential. | neurotechnology.substack.com · LinkedIn · X |
| James Cavuoto | Neurotech Reports / Neurotech Business Report | Veteran industry analyst since 2001. Publishes the NBR newsletter and market research reports. Background in biomedical engineering (Case Western). One of the longest-running dedicated neurotech publications. | neurotechreports.com · LinkedIn |
| Blythe Karow | The Device Files (Substack) / Karow Advisory Group | MedTech CEO turned commercialization strategist. Covers wearables, neuromodulation, and digital health go-to-market strategy. Also runs the NeuroTech Course (free, structured curriculum for neural device commercialization). | blythekarow.substack.com · LinkedIn |
| Neurofounders | neurofounders.co | Tracks neurotech companies, funding rounds, and market intelligence. Useful for company-level data. | neurofounders.co |
Podcasts
Long-form conversations with the people actually building and implanting these devices.
| Name | Podcast | Focus | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ladan Jiracek | Neural Implant Podcast | 250+ episodes since 2017. Interviews industry leaders, researchers, and company founders in the BMI/BCI space. Lab technician at UF researching peripheral nerve implants. One of the most information-dense BCI podcasts. | Apple Podcasts · LinkedIn |
| Harrison Canning & Colin Fausnaught | The BCI Guys | Neurotech researchers and educators. YouTube + podcast content focused on making neurotechnology accessible. Collaborated with NeuroTechX on “Foundations of Neurotechnology” course. | bciguys.com · YouTube |
| David Eagleman | Inner Cosmos | Stanford neuroscientist and author. His podcast covers brain science broadly, but frequently touches on neural interfaces and augmentation. Large public following. | eagleman.com · Instagram |
| Omari Bouknight | RLM (Resonant Link Medical podcast) | CEO of Resonant Link Medical. Interviews founders, engineers, and clinicians working on implantable neurotech, with emphasis on wireless power delivery. |
Key Academic Researchers (Public-Facing)
Scientists running the labs producing BCI breakthroughs, who also engage publicly through talks, press, and social media. These are the people whose papers become the next product features.
Invasive BCI / Speech Neuroprosthetics
| Name | Affiliation | Why Follow |
|---|---|---|
| Edward Chang | UCSF, Dept. of Neurological Surgery | Leads the BRAVO clinical trial. His lab pioneered speech-to-text BCI decoding and multilingual speech neuroprosthetics. The Chang Lab is producing many of the landmark Nature papers in speech BCI. |
| Leigh Hochberg | Massachusetts General Hospital / Brown / VA | Co-director of BrainGate. Led the first successful human BCI implant (early 2000s). Now convenes the iBCI Collaborative Community (iBCI-CC) with the FDA. Foundational figure in the field’s clinical translation. |
| Sergey Stavisky | UC Davis | Co-senior author on recent Nature speech-BCI work. Co-director of the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab and a core BrainGate investigator, focused on real-time speech neuroprosthetics. |
| Francis Willett | Stanford / BrainGate | Led the 2021 handwriting BCI record (90 chars/min) and subsequent speech decoding work approaching natural speech speed. Co-leads Stanford’s Neural Prosthetics Translational Lab’s invasive BCI efforts. |
| Maitreyee Wairagkar | UC Davis / BrainGate | Project scientist on speech neuroprosthesis and brain-to-voice synthesis. First author on the 2025 Nature instantaneous voice synthesis paper from the UC Davis/BrainGate team. |
| Jaimie Henderson | Stanford Neurosurgery | Neurosurgeon co-director (with the late Krishna Shenoy) of the Neural Prosthetics Translational Lab. Performs the implant surgeries and drives clinical translation across multiple BCI trials. |
| David Brandman | UC Davis | Neurosurgeon and co-director of the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab. Lead on the NEJM speech BCI that hit ~97% decoding accuracy in an ALS participant and winner of the 2025 Herbert Pardes Clinical Research Excellence Award. |
| Vikash Gilja | UC San Diego / Paradromics | Neural engineer whose work spans academic BCI decoding and industry translation. Associate Professor at UCSD ECE and Chief Scientific Officer at Paradromics, helping shape the Connexus intracortical BCI system. |
Non-invasive / Wearable BCI
| Name | Affiliation | Why Follow |
|---|---|---|
| Jose “Pepe” Contreras-Vidal | University of Houston (BRAIN Center) | Leads the NSF IUCRC BRAIN Center. Pioneered non-invasive brain-machine interfaces for wearable exoskeletons. Led a comprehensive survey of iBCI clinical trials (Nature Reviews Bioengineering). Also does art-science BCI work in public spaces. |
| Rajesh Rao | University of Washington | Demonstrated the first brain-to-brain interface in 2013 and wrote one of the main BCI textbooks. Broad research portfolio in BCIs and computational neuroscience, including non-invasive interfaces. |
| Azadeh Yazdan-Shahmorad | University of Washington | Develops large-scale optogenetic and ECoG-based neurointerfaces in non-human primates for stroke rehabilitation and cortical reorganization. Her NERD Lab’s platforms are prototypes for future non-invasive and hybrid BCIs. |
Neural Interface Hardware
The people building the physical interfaces (arrays, probes, and implants) that make all of the above decoding possible.
| Name | Affiliation | Why Follow |
|---|---|---|
| Shadi Dayeh | UC San Diego | Professor in ECE developing platinum nanorod (PtNR) electrode arrays and high-channel-count clinical systems. Holds an FDA IDE for a 1,024-channel intraoperative recording system used in 100+ patients and leads ARPA-H-funded work on vision-restoring implants. |
| Duygu Kuzum | UC San Diego | Develops transparent, graphene-based cortical interfaces that can read deep-brain activity from the surface. Her lab’s “transparent brain implant” and related Nature Nanotechnology work are core to next-gen high-density, minimally invasive BCIs. |
| Angelique Paulk | MGH / Harvard | Neurologist and neural engineer leading human Neuropixels recordings and large-scale surface interfaces at Mass General’s CNTR. Her work on high-resolution human recordings defines the hardware envelope for future invasive BCIs. |
Computational Methods for BCI
Method developers whose decoding algorithms, neural-manifold models, and statistical methods are increasingly baked into real systems.
| Name | Affiliation | Why Follow |
|---|---|---|
| Chethan Pandarinath | Emory / Georgia Tech | Directs the Systems Neural Engineering Lab. Co-developed LFADS/AutoLFADS, NoMAD, and related tools for robust neural decoding and calibration-free BCI. Co-leads an Emory BrainGate clinical site and is a Sloan Fellow and NIH New Innovator. |
| Eva Dyer | Georgia Tech | Leads the NerDS Lab, creating ML methods for large-scale neural data (representation learning, domain adaptation, multimodal alignment). Sloan Fellow and McKnight awardee whose tools are directly applicable to long-term BCI decoder stability. |
| Scott Linderman | Stanford | Assistant Professor of Statistics and co-director of the Stanford Center for Neural Data Science. Designs state-space models and probabilistic tools for neural and behavioral time series that are increasingly used in BCI decoder pipelines. |
| Juan Álvaro Gallego | Imperial College London / Champalimaud | Works on neural manifold models of movement and control, showing how low-dimensional population dynamics constrain BCI performance. His work offers a principled view on why some decoders generalize and others fail. |
| Laura Gwilliams | Stanford | Studies neural representations of speech and language using MEG, ECoG, and high-density recordings. Her lab sits at the intersection of speech neuroscience and data science, informing how future BCIs might decode not just articulation but comprehension. |
Neuroethics
| Name | Affiliation | Why Follow |
|---|---|---|
| Nita Farahany | Duke Law | Author of The Battle for Your Brain and leading voice on cognitive liberty, mental privacy, and neurotechnology regulation. Frequently appears alongside BCI technologists in public and policy forums. |
| Rafael Yuste | Columbia University / NeuroRights Foundation | Proposed the concept of “NeuroRights” and helped draft the first neurotechnology legislation in Chile. Central figure in efforts to treat brain data as a special category of data requiring new rights frameworks. |
Late Krishna Shenoy’s Legacy
Krishna Shenoy (Stanford) passed away in 2023 but his Neural Prosthetics Systems Lab set numerous BCI performance records. His students and postdocs — including Francis Willett (Stanford), Chethan Pandarinath (Emory/GA Tech), Cindy Chestek (U. Michigan), and Aaron Batista (U. Pittsburgh) — now lead their own labs and continue this lineage. Following them tracks the cutting edge of BCI decoding and neural engineering.
Rising Postdocs & Early-Career Researchers
People 1–3 years from starting their own labs, already shaping high‑impact BCI work.
| Name | Affiliation | Why Follow |
|---|---|---|
| Daril Brown II | UC Davis / BrainGate | Postdoc in the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab working on conversational speech BCIs and the brain’s “internal autocorrect” for self-calibrating decoders. Schmidt Science Fellow and Siebel Scholar with a PhD from UC San Diego (Gilja & Gentner) using songbirds as a model for speech prostheses. |
| Nicholas Card | UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab | Lead author on the NEJM speech BCI paper that achieved ~97% accuracy in an ALS participant. Holds a Burroughs Wellcome Career Award at the Scientific Interface and is also a visiting neuroengineer at Neuralink, giving him a rare view across academic and industry BCI. |
| Erin Kunz | Stanford NPTL / BrainGate | Postdoc with the Neural Prosthetics Translational Lab focused on speech and inner‑speech BCIs. Co‑leads work on high‑performance speech decoding systems; previously an engineer on autonomous vehicles, bringing real‑time systems and safety‑critical experience into clinical BCI. |
| Yahia Ali | Emory / Georgia Tech (Pandarinath Lab) | Late‑stage PhD / incoming postdoc who built BRAND, the real‑time BCI software framework now used by multiple Utah‑array BCI sites, and contributed to NoMAD and related methods for calibration‑free decoding. One of the key people operationalizing next‑gen decoder stacks across labs. |
Industry Founders & Executives
The people running the companies building commercial BCIs.
| Name | Company | Why Follow |
|---|---|---|
| Tom Oxley | Synchron (CEO) | Leading the endovascular BCI approach (Stentrode). Most simultaneous BCI volunteers of any company (10+). Apple integration for iPad control via thought. |
| Matt Angle | Paradromics (CEO) | High-data-rate intracortical BCI. Received FDA IDE approval in 2025. Completed first-in-human recording with Connexus system. |
| Michael Mager | Precision Neuroscience (CEO) | Layer 7 Cortical Interface. Recently partnered with Medtronic. Surface-based electrode approach (less invasive than penetrating arrays). |
| Max Hodak | Science Corporation (CEO) | Former Neuralink co-founder/president. Now building PRIMA retina implant for vision restoration and biohybrid BCI technology. Named to Time’s 100 Most Influential People in Health (2026). |
| Benjamin Rapoport | Precision Neuroscience (co-founder) | Neurosurgeon and engineer. Also a former Neuralink founding team member. |
| Conor Russomanno | OpenBCI (CEO) | Open-source BCI hardware. Recently launched the Galea platform and Galea Discovery Program for developers/researchers. Democratizing access to neural interfaces. |
| Tan Le | Emotiv (CEO) | Consumer/research EEG headsets. Long-running neurotech company with wide adoption in research and commercial settings. |
| Alex Marblestone | Merge Labs (CEO) | Raised $252M from OpenAI and others. Working on minimally invasive neural interfaces. |
Investors & Ecosystem Builders
People who fund, connect, and shape the industry from outside the lab.
| Name | Organization | Why Follow |
|---|---|---|
| Amy Kruse | Satori Neuro (CIO) | Former DARPA program manager who created the agency’s first neuroscience performance programs. Now runs a neurotech-focused fund. Board member at Paradromics, Cognixion, and several other neurotech companies. One of the most connected and technically fluent investors in the space. |
| Michael McCullough | BrainMind (Founder/CEO) | Convenes the BrainMind ecosystem — 1,800+ member community including scientists, entrepreneurs, and investors. EIR at Greylock. Events at Stanford, MIT, and Oxford. The connective tissue of the neurotech startup world. |
| Julia Moore | Breakout Ventures | San Francisco-based VC investing in early-stage neurotech startups (e.g., Phantom Neuro). |
| Paolo Di Giorgio | Angelini Ventures | Neurotech investor focused on the European ecosystem. |
| Reid Hoffman | Greylock / BrainMind advisor | LinkedIn co-founder, core advisor to BrainMind. Not a daily follow, but his involvement signals Silicon Valley’s interest in neurotech. |
| Ian Burkhart | BCI Pioneers Coalition | Not an investor, but a critical voice: the first person to use BCI to reanimate a paralyzed limb. Founded the BCI Pioneers Coalition with other BCI users. VP of North American Spinal Cord Injury Consortium. Represents the patient/user perspective that the industry needs. |
| Jennifer French | Neurotech Network / NASIC | BCI user and advocate who lives with tetraplegia. Decades of contributions to neurotechnology advocacy, patient education, and pre-commercial BCI strategy. |
Communities & Organizations
Groups that aggregate people and signal.
| Name | What It Is | Links |
|---|---|---|
| NeuroTechX | Global non-profit with 30+ city chapters and 6,000+ Slack members. Runs NeurotechEDU, hackathons, and local meetups. The grassroots community layer. | neurotechx.com · Slack |
| BrainMind | Private ecosystem of scientists, entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers. Curated events and introductions. Has catalyzed multiple neurotech startups. | brainmind.org |
| iBCI Collaborative Community (iBCI-CC) | First FDA-participating collaborative community in clinical neurosciences. Convened by Mass General Brigham. Works on interoperability, ethics of neural data, and accelerating iBCI development. | MGH/BrainGate |
| IEEE Brain Initiative | IEEE’s neurotech arm. Covers engineering standards, neuroethics, and technical BCI research. Publishes curated content from IEEE Spectrum and conferences. | brain.ieee.org |
| Society for Neuroscience (SfN) | Largest neuroscience organization. Annual meeting is where major BCI papers debut. | sfn.org |
| NANS | North American Neuromodulation Society. Industry-focused annual meeting covering neuromodulation and neurostimulation clinical innovation. | neuromodulation.org |
Broad-Knowledge Bonus Follows
People and outlets not strictly BCI-specific but essential for understanding the broader context, methods, and ecosystem.
| Name / Outlet | Why |
|---|---|
| Ed Boyden (MIT) | Pioneer of optogenetics and expansion microscopy. Core to understanding future non-invasive and hybrid neural interfaces. BrainMind core advisor and frequent interlocutor for neurotech founders. |
| Brad Voytek (UC San Diego) | Full Professor and Chair of Cognitive Science. His lab created FOOOF/specparam and NeuroDSP, foundational tools for analyzing neural oscillations and aperiodic activity that many BCI labs now rely on. Also a connector through teaching and public communication. |
| Thomas Donoghue (University of Manchester) | Creator of FOOOF/specparam, a widely adopted method for separating periodic from aperiodic neural activity. Now a lecturer working with iEEG and single-neuron data. His methods directly influence feature engineering for BCI decoders. |
| Richard Gao (Goethe University Frankfurt) | W1 Professor and computational neuroscientist building “brain foundation models” and generative AI approaches for neural time series. Formerly at InteraXon (Muse). His work points to where neural data modeling for BCI may be heading. |
| Ashley Juavinett (UC San Diego) | Neuroscience educator, co-director of STARTneuro, and author of So You Want to Be a Neuroscientist? Key for understanding the training pipeline and how people enter fields like neurotech and BCI. |
| Nita Farahany (Duke) | Also listed above, but essential for the legal/regulatory frame around all neural data and cognitive liberty debates. |
| Rafael Yuste / NeuroRights Foundation | Policy dimension — Chile’s neurorights law, UN-level discussions, and broader attempts to define rights frameworks around neurotechnology. |
| FierceBiotech | Biotech business news. Covers neurotech funding, M&A, and strategic shifts that impact BCI companies. |
| MedTech Dive | Medical device industry news. Tracks FDA actions, device-company partnerships, and deal flow in neuromodulation and neural devices. |
| MassDevice | Medical device trade publication focusing on clearances, recalls, and commercial milestones — useful for following when neurotech devices cross regulatory thresholds. |
| Endpoints News | Biotech and pharma deal coverage, relevant when large pharma and medtech players move into CNS and neuromodulation. |
| Works in Progress | Long-form magazine that published one of the clearest single-article overviews of the BCI trajectory from BrainGate to Neuralink to modern speech prostheses. |
How to Use This List
For RSS/tocify integration: Most of these people publish on platforms with RSS endpoints — Substack, personal blogs, institutional pages. Naveen Rao’s Neurotech Futures and Neurotech Reports are the highest-signal industry newsletters.
For X/Bluesky monitoring: The journalists (Mullin, Regalado, Askham) and company founders (Oxley, Angle, Hodak) are most active on social media. NeuroTechX and Neurotech Futures also maintain active feeds.
For depth on a specific company or trial: The academic researchers (Chang, Hochberg, Willett, Stavisky) publish the primary papers. The journalists (Mullin, Regalado, STAT reporters) provide the accessible narrative.
For market/investment signal: Naveen Rao’s Signals analysis, James Cavuoto’s NBR, Amy Kruse’s public talks, and BrainMind events.
Last updated: 2026-02-25