Recent activity, awards, and lab milestones.
A chronological feed of lab news — talks and posters, awards and fellowships, publications, and trainee milestones from the past 18 months. Filter by category, or visit the news archive for older entries.
2026
Bowen Wang submits master's thesis on single-hemisphere bimanual decoding for motor brain–computer interfaces.
Master's student Bowen Wang submitted his Penn Bioengineering M.S.E. thesis, "Single-Hemisphere Decoding of Bimanual Hand Movement: Implications for Motor Brain-Computer Interfaces." The work spans a Miami chronic Activa PC+S sparse-ECoG dataset for four-class motor imagery and a Penn intraoperative 1024-channel Precision Neuroscience micro-ECoG dataset for ipsilateral versus contralateral hand decoding. Bowen will matriculate in the Emory University Neuroscience PhD program in Fall 2026.
Kamren Khan awarded a Parkinson's Foundation Summer Student Fellowship.
MD–PhD candidate Kamren Khan was awarded a Parkinson's Foundation Summer Student Fellowship for the project "Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Beta and Broadband Activity Along the Hyperdirect Pathway." The award supports summer 2026 research extending the lab's work on subthalamic-cortical motor signaling in Parkinson's disease.
Kyunghwan Lim selected for the Hermes/Miller Lab summer placement at Mayo Clinic.
Undergraduate researcher Kyunghwan Lim will spend Summer 2026 at the Mayo Clinic in the labs of Drs. Dora Hermes and Kai Miller, working on intracranial electrophysiology and cognitive neuroscience. Kyunghwan will return to the RESToRe Lab in fall 2026.
Kamren Khan awarded the Guggenheim Family Neurosurgery Scholarship for Summer 2026.
MD–PhD candidate Kamren Khan was selected for the Guggenheim Family Neurosurgery Scholarship through Penn's Department of Neurosurgery. The eight-week summer scholarship supports continued work on basal-ganglia population dynamics in movement disorders.
Thalamus, the lab's real-time multimodal data-capture system, is published in Communications Engineering.
Drs. Iahn Cajigas, Bijan Pesaran, Casey Halpern, Brian Litt, and colleagues (including Drs. Michael Beauchamp and Daniel Yoshor) report Thalamus, an open-source software platform for synchronized closed-loop electrophysiology and behavior. Lab co-authors include Jarl Haggerty, Qasim Qureshi, Pedro Borges, Krishna Sargur, Min Jae Kim, Pierce Davis, Ellie Gabriel, and Jerry Cai. The accepted preprint accumulated approximately 3,578 accesses in its first week of public availability.
Michael Baumgartner presents the cuneiform-nucleus DBS for freezing-of-gait story at the San Francisco Neurological Society.
Lab member Michael Baumgartner gave an invited talk at the San Francisco Neurological Society on the lab's cuneiform-nucleus deep brain stimulation work for levodopa-resistant freezing of gait in Parkinson's disease, presenting the trajectory from the Phase I pilot trial to the multicenter program now underway with support from the Michael J. Fox Foundation.
Iahn Cajigas honored with the NANS Kumar New Investigator Award.
Dr. Iahn Cajigas received the North American Neuromodulation Society's Kumar New Investigator Award for the implantable brain–computer interface for volitional hand-grasp restoration in spinal cord injury. The award was presented at the NANS 2026 Annual Meeting on January 24, 2026.
2025
Kyunghwan Lim's Parkinson's-tremor poster accepted at the Nature Conferences "Towards Healthy Brain Aging" meeting.
Undergraduate researcher Kyunghwan Lim had a poster on Parkinson's disease tremor accepted at the Nature Conferences "Towards Healthy Brain Aging" meeting, his first nationally curated meeting acceptance. The work draws on the lab's intraoperative tremor recordings under the mentorship of Dr. Iahn Cajigas.
Effect of motor imagery on tremor in a patient with Parkinson disease undergoing intraoperative testing — published in Neurology.
Dr. Pedro Borges (first author), Qasim Qureshi, Drs. Lauren Hammer and Iahn Cajigas (co-senior authors) report a single-patient case showing that volitional motor imagery suppresses tremor during awake intraoperative testing for deep brain stimulation. The work was carried out as part of the lab's intraoperative electrophysiology program at Pennsylvania Hospital.
Krishna Sargur presents PSID-based finger-speed decoding at SfN 2025 in Chicago.
PhD student Krishna Sargur presented a poster at the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting in Chicago on Preferential Subspace Identification (PSID) applied to high-density electrocorticography for movement-speed decoding in human M1. Co-authors include Pedro Borges, Qasim Qureshi, Tom Pisano, Bowen Wang, Benjamin Rapoport, and Drs. Bijan Pesaran and Iahn Cajigas.
Krishna Sargur presents PSID extraction of latent motor-speed subspaces at CNS 2025.
PhD student Krishna Sargur presented a poster at the Congress of Neurological Surgeons Annual Meeting on "Preferential Subspace Identification Extracts High Gamma Driven Latent Spaces That Are Highly Correlated With Movement Speed In Human M1 ECoG Recordings." Co-authors include Pedro Borges, Qasim Qureshi, Tom Pisano, Bowen Wang, Benjamin Rapoport, and Drs. Bijan Pesaran and Iahn Cajigas.
Bowen Wang presents asymmetric motor-cortex representations at CNS 2025 — his first national-meeting poster.
Master's student Bowen Wang presented his first national-meeting poster at the Congress of Neurological Surgeons Annual Meeting: "Asymmetric Motor Representations in Ipsilateral and Contralateral Motor Cortex During Hand Gesture Executions." Co-authors include Pedro Borges, Qasim Qureshi, Krishna Sargur, Tom Pisano, Benjamin Rapoport, and Drs. Bijan Pesaran and Iahn Cajigas. The work anticipates Bowen's M.S.E. thesis on single-hemisphere bimanual decoding.
Qasim Qureshi presents traveling-wave dynamics in precentral gyrus at CNS 2025.
Research specialist Qasim Qureshi presented an abstract at the Congress of Neurological Surgeons Annual Meeting titled "Quantifying Traveling Waves in the Precentral Gyrus Using a High-Density Micro-Electrocorticography Array," extending the lab's beta-dynamics work to a multi-patient cohort. Co-authors include Pedro Borges, Krishna Sargur, Bowen Wang, Pierce Davis, Tom Pisano, Benjamin Rapoport, and Drs. Bijan Pesaran and Iahn Cajigas.
Michael J. Fox Foundation funds a multicenter trial of sensing-enabled cuneiform-nucleus DBS for freezing of gait.
The Michael J. Fox Foundation awarded funding to Dr. Iahn Cajigas (coordinating PI) for a multicenter trial of sensing-enabled directional deep brain stimulation of the cuneiform nucleus for levodopa-resistant freezing of gait in Parkinson's disease, with Penn as the coordinating center alongside UCSF and the University of Miami.
Krishna Sargur passes the Penn Bioengineering qualifying examination.
PhD student Krishna Sargur passed his qualifying examination in the Penn Department of Bioengineering on July 31, 2025. His committee included Drs. Andrew Richardson and Michael Beauchamp.
Yuanchao Zhang defends his master's thesis on dynamic mode decomposition for neural and kinematic signals.
M.S.E. student Yuanchao Zhang defended his Penn Materials Science and Engineering thesis, "A Review of Advanced Dynamic Mode Decomposition Techniques for Neural and Kinematic Signal Analysis," co-advised by Drs. Iahn Cajigas and Pratik Chaudhari. The thesis builds the visualization and dimensionality-reduction pipeline for the lab's intraoperative motion-capture data.
Krishna Sargur's team wins Dr. Brian Litt's Penn BE 5210 brain–computer interface competition.
PhD student Krishna Sargur was on the winning team in Dr. Brian Litt's BCI competition for Penn Bioengineering 5210 in spring 2025.
Six-month outcomes of low-frequency directional cuneiform-nucleus DBS for levodopa-resistant freezing of gait — published in Neurology.
The lab's cuneiform-nucleus deep brain stimulation team — alumna Jaskeerat Gujral and lab member Michael Baumgartner among the co-authors, with Drs. Liming Qiu, Casey Halpern, and Iahn Cajigas as senior co-authors at Penn — reported six-month outcomes from the Phase I pilot in Neurology. The paper was first presented as a co-authored abstract at the American Academy of Neurology 2025 Annual Meeting in San Diego.
Min Jae Kim and Ellie Gabriel present a co-authored brain–computer interface e-poster at AANS 2025.
MD–PhD candidate Min Jae Kim and medical student Ellie Gabriel co-presented an e-poster at the American Association of Neurological Surgeons Annual Scientific Meeting in Boston, reporting on the lab's BCI decoding work in collaboration with the Precision Neuroscience high-density ECoG program under the mentorship of Dr. Iahn Cajigas.
Iahn Cajigas invited speaker at AANS 2025: "Penetrating and Non-penetrating Arrays for Motor BCI."
Dr. Iahn Cajigas was invited to speak at the American Association of Neurological Surgeons 2025 Annual Scientific Meeting on the trade-offs between penetrating and surface-based recording arrays for motor brain–computer interface applications.
2024
Validation of an ICD-10 diagnostic code for essential tremor — published in Tremor and Other Hyperkinetic Movements.
Dr. Susanna Howard (first author) and colleagues — including Drs. Liming Qiu, Casey Halpern, and Iahn Cajigas at Penn — validated the ICD-10-CM diagnostic code for essential tremor against chart review, providing a foundation for future epidemiologic and outcomes work in the population.
Pierce Davis selected for oral presentation at CNS 2024 Houston: high-density ECoG array localization.
Medical student Pierce Davis gave an oral presentation at the Congress of Neurological Surgeons Annual Meeting in Houston on intraoperative localization of high-density electrocorticography arrays, in collaboration with Precision Neuroscience. Co-authors include Drs. Bijan Pesaran, Casey Halpern, Han-Chiao Isaac Chen, and Iahn Cajigas.
Qasim Qureshi presents beta-dynamics work with high-density cortical surface array at SfN 2024.
Research specialist Qasim Qureshi presented "Unraveling Beta Dynamics with a High-Density Cortical Surface Array" at the Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, reporting on beta-spiral suppression during movement using a 1024-channel ECoG recording over hand-knob cortex during an essential-tremor focused-ultrasound rock-paper-scissors task. Co-authors include Pierce Davis, Alex Vaz, Min Jae Kim, Jarl Haggerty, Benjamin Rapoport, and Drs. Bijan Pesaran and Iahn Cajigas.
Min Jae Kim presents motor-cortex oscillatory dynamics after STN-DBS at CNS 2024 Houston.
MD–PhD candidate Min Jae Kim gave an oral presentation at the Congress of Neurological Surgeons Annual Meeting on "Distinctive Spatial Distributions of Motor Cortex Oscillatory Dynamics after Subthalamic Nucleus Deep Brain Stimulation in Parkinson's Disease," using a 1024-channel ECoG array to map STN-DBS effects across alpha, beta, and gamma bands. Co-authors include Qasim Qureshi, Pierce Davis, Alex Vaz, and Drs. Bijan Pesaran and Iahn Cajigas.
Qasim Qureshi presents spatiotemporal motor-cortex dynamics at CNS 2024 Houston.
Research specialist Qasim Qureshi presented "Deciphering Spatiotemporal Patterns in the Motor Cortex Using a High-Density Micro-Electrocorticography Array" at the Congress of Neurological Surgeons Annual Meeting, applying Hilbert-transform-based dynamics analysis across alpha, beta, gamma, and delta bands during an essential-tremor focused-ultrasound case. Co-authors include Pierce Davis, Min Jae Kim, Jarl Haggerty, Alex Vaz, Benjamin Rapoport, and Drs. Bijan Pesaran, Casey Halpern, Michael Beauchamp, and Iahn Cajigas.
Pierce Davis presents two Medicare reimbursement abstracts at CNS 2024 Houston.
Medical student Pierce Davis (first author) presented two Medicare-reimbursement abstracts at the Congress of Neurological Surgeons Annual Meeting: "A Decade of Change: Trends and Disparities in Medicare Reimbursement for Deep Brain Stimulation" and "Amid the Opioid Epidemic: Falling Medicare Reimbursement for Spinal Cord Stimulation." Co-authors include Qasim Qureshi, Susanna Howard, and Drs. Liming Qiu, Han-Chiao Isaac Chen, Casey Halpern, and Iahn Cajigas.