Leadership
Edward Chang, MD
Co-Director, UCSF
A founding director of CNEP, Dr. Edward Chang is Department Chair for Neurological Surgery at UCSF. His wide-ranging and impactful research has revealed critical aspects of the brain’s ability to understand and produce language, and he has helped to pioneer real-time decoding of the brain’s speech signals through brain-computer interfaces for those who have lost the ability to communicate. His research program has also helped to advance closed-loop neuromodulation approaches for the treatment of severe neuropsychiatric disorders such as major depression and chronic pain. As a neurosurgeon, Dr. Chang’s clinical focus includes difficult-to-control epilepsy, brain tumors, trigeminal neuralgia, and movement disorders, with specialist expertise in advanced brain mapping methods to preserve crucial areas for speech and motor functions in the brain. He also has extensive experience with implantable neuromodulation devices to relieve seizure, movement, pain and other disorders.
Dr. Chang earned his medical degree at UCSF, where he also completed a residency in neurosurgery. He was honored with the Blavatnik National Laureate for Life Sciences in 2015. In 2020, he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine, an honor that recognizes outstanding achievements and service in the fields of medical sciences, health care and public health.
Michael Yarstev, PhD
Co-Director, UC Berkeley
Dr. Michael Yartsev is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and associate professor of Bioengineering and Neuroscience at UC Berkeley. His research focuses on understanding the neural basis of natural spatial, social and acoustic capabilities in mammals, taking on investigations across multiple modalities of learning, information processing and complex behavior. Working with an ideal model system for such questions, the bat, Dr. Yarstev’s research has pioneered a wide range of technologies for monitoring and manipulating neural activity in freely behaving animals – including wireless neurophysiology and wireless calcium imaging – to advance a detailed understanding of neural computations that enable complex behavior and learning. By taking a neuroethological approach to such advanced behaviors as spatial memory formation, precision navigation, communication and other interactions underpinning social groups, his research aims to uncover core principles of brain function that subserve complex natural behaviors in the mammalian brain.
Dr. Yarstev completed his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Biomedical engineering at the Ben-Gurion University in 2007, and received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the Weizmann institute. He was subsequently a C.V. Starr fellow in neuroscience in the Princeton Neuroscience Institute where he completed a post-doc in the laboratory of Carlos Brody. He is an HHMI Investigator and holds a joint appointment in the departments of Bioengineering and Neuroscience at Berkeley.