Jacob George on implantable and wearable neurotech research at the University of Utah

Dr Jacob George is an assistant professor at the University of Utah where his NeuroRobotics lab seeks to augment biological neural networks with artificial neural networks and bionic devices to treat neurological disorders and to further our understanding of neural processing.

***This podcast is sponsored by Ripple Neuro, check out their Neuroscience Research Tools here***

Top 3 Takeaways:

• "I'm 28 years old. So very young still getting stuff set up and really kickstarting it. The average age that NIH states for someone to get an R01 is somewhere around 47 years old and they really wanna change that. They wanna get people into science earlier. And so that's the mechanism that I went through and so very fortunate to have that funding to kick start stuff."
•  "The idea is, you had a stroke, you wake up in a hospital, you get the fitted with this bionic arm that helps you move immediately. So it's like nothing happened. And as you're doing these things in your real world life, all of a sudden. You don't need the exoskeleton anymore because your hand's back to use because you have rehabilitated yourself."
• "A one-off grant is great, that's luck, if you get one thing that's luck, but repeatedly, being successful in funding starts to show a pattern of success that is more and more unlikely that it was just luck."

0:45 "Do you want to introduce yourself?"

2:30 "You're also a pretty new professor. How old are you also?"

4:30 "How did you get into this field?"

6:15 Sponsorship by Ripple Neuro

7:00 "Do you want to go in a little bit more in-depth about the different aspects of your research and maybe we could start with the Luke arm."

13:45 "So what does the training look like for the patients?"

17:00 "That calibration sounds tedious. How long is it?"

19:45"Is glial scarring also a problem in the peripheral nervous system or is it worse, better? How does it compare to the central nervous system?"

21:00 "Do you wanna talk a little bit about exoskeletons?"

25:45 "Which one do you love more, invasive or noninvasive?"

30:30 "What's especially motivating you to deal with this specific patient population?"

33:00 "Do you have any tips for people who might want to fall in your footsteps of being a young professor?"

36:45 "How similar is your training between, what you're doing at the PhD, working at the bench versus, being a professor and, needing to find those dollar bills?"

39:45 What specific exercises would you recommend for finding funding?

44:45 "Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you wanted to mention?"