May 2026 Newsletter

University of Washington

Honors and Awards

David Bell (lab of UW CNT faculty member Adrienne Fairhall) successfully defended his dissertation titled “Discovering plasticity rules for learning and resilience in neural circuits.” David is now working with Laura Driscoll at the Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics.

UW faculty members Amy Orsborn and Sam Burden lead a research team that designs neural interfaces using game theory.

UW CNT faculty member Azadeh Yazdan uses optogenetics to control and monitor neural activity in the brain. This research may lead to new treatments for a variety of neurological disorders.

Salvatori, T., Mali, A., Buckley, C.L., Lukasiewicz, T., Rao, R.P.N., Friston, K, and Ororbia, A. A survey on neuro-mimetic deep learning via predictive coding. Neural Netw., 2026 Mar;195:108161. doi: 10.1016/j.neunet.2025.108161.
N’dri, A.W., Gebhardt, W., Teulière, C., Zeldenrust, F., Rao, R.P.N., Triesch, J. and Ororbia, A. Predictive coding with spiking neural networks: A survey. Neural Netw., 2026 Apr;196:108371. doi: 10.1016/j.neunet.2025.108371.
Madduri, M.M., Yamagami, M., Li, S.J., Burckhardt, S., Burden, S.A. and Orsborn, A.L. Computational framework to predict and shape human–machine interactions in closed-loop, co-adaptive neural interfaces. Nat. Mach. Intell., 8:372–387, 2026.
Nakahara, R., Nasson, S., Bieler, E., Putsche-Young, E., Aguila, B., Shen, J., Chung, E., Winston, L., Burns, S., Crane, D., Eugenio, M., Krogh, K., Krassioukov, A., Moritz, C. and Samejima S. Effects of non-invasive spinal cord stimulation on autonomic function in individuals with subacute spinal cord injury: A pilot clinical trial protocol. PLoS One, 2026 Apr 20;21(4):e0347211. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0347211.

Junior Specialist, Neuroprosthetics Lab, UC Davis (Davis, CA)
Research Professional 1 – Translational Neuroengineering Lab, Univ. Minnesota (Twin Cities, MN)
Assistant Professor, Teaching Track Faculty in Neurotechnology, Carnegie Mellon Univ. (Pittsburgh, PA)
Assistant, Associate or Full Professor, College of Medicine, Univ. Arizona (Phoenix, AZ)