Ali Marjaninejad

Bio

My name is Ali, a second year PhD student in the Biomedical Engineering program here at USC. I completed my undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering and continued my graduate studies in biomedical engineering at Tehran Polytechnic (Amirkabir). Now, I am doing a PhD in BME as well as studying in the Health, Technology, and Engineering (THE) program at USC. I work at the ValeroLab under supervision of professor Francisco Valero-Cuevas. I am mainly interested in understanding how our brain controls our movements by studying both invasive and non-invasive recordings of brain in forms of Single Unit Activities (SUAs), and Electroencephalogram (EEG).

I will take a moment to describe why I chose this field. I was very curious when I was a child (I still am!). I used to break devices in our house to figure out how they work. Even if I couldn't figure it out, I would find the right person to ask and I could always find someone who got the answer for me. I think I was around 10 years old when I started asking the question “How does our brain work?”. I spent lots of time seeking out the answer to this question but this time I couldn’t find anyone who could give me a satisfying answer. My curiosity in finding it out along with the passion of helping people in a more direct way attracted me to the field of BME. I am very glad that I am working toward finding an answer to one of the most prominent questions of our time, while helping to develop better techniques to treat people with neuro-motor diseases. I am still that curious kid trying to figure out how our brain works!