Sergey Stavisky received his Sc.B. in Neuroscience from Brown University in 2008, after which he worked as a research engineer for two years. He completed his PhD in neuroscience at Stanford University in 2016, where he studied the motor cortex’s role in the sensorimotor control of reaching and developed brain-computer interfaces in a preclinical monkey model in the lab of Prof. Krishna Shenoy.

His postdoctoral training was in the Stanford Neural Prosthetics Translational Laboratory, mentored by Profs. Jaimie Henderson and Shenoy. There, he built BCIs to restore the ability of clinical trial participants with paralysis to control a robotic arm and started to study the single neuron correlates of speech. In 2021, Dr. Stavisky started an independent lab in the Department of Neurological Surgery at the University of California, Davis, together with neurosurgeon Dr. David Brandman.

The UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab is currently focused on understanding and restoring speech and language production and bringing next-generation neural interfaces to human use. Dr. Stavisky has been recognized with awards including the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, Searle Scholars, 2023 BCI Award, the MIND Prize, the International BCI Society Early Career Award, and the Sean M. Healey International Prize for Innovation in ALS.