NeuroEngineering Training Program

Prof. Thakor is the Director of the NeuroEngineering Training Program for BME PhDs at Johns Hopkins. The purpose of the program is to unify students and professors of NeuroEngineering through a cohesive structure, providing the necessary funding for new PhD trainees to explore multiple research pathways during their first few years. Students have access to mentors not only in Biomedical Engineering, but other engineering departments, the Mind-Brain Institute, various clinical departments (Neurology, Neurosurgery, Otolaryngology, Radiology), the School of Arts and Sciences (Cognitive Sciences), and the Applied Physics Laboratory.

The ultimate goal of the NeuroEngineering Training Program is to train the next generation of engineers, scientists, and innovators of technology and its translation. Our program began 15 years ago with the goal of attending to the keen interests of our students in the brain and the nervous system, stimulated by our pioneering neuroscience and biomedical engineering researchers. The current generation of engineering students are dually interested in the basic sciences and solving clinical and translational problems.

After 15 years of success, our program is now entering a phase in which we must meet new needs (translational projects, industrial careers) and challenges (distance education, new research areas). In recent years, many of our trainees have expressed interest in following less-traditional career paths such as entrepreneurship, science advocacy, and science policymaking. To address this, we are continuously adapting our program. Recent examples include the addition of a Translational NeuroEngineering track (added to our existing Basic and Clinical NeuroEngineering tracks) and the addition of new core curriculum in Neural Data Science.

If you are a prospective student with a passion for NeuroEngineering research, please check out our program’s incredible participating faculty. You can also click here to learn more about earning a PhD in Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins.