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CMU Neural Engineering Virtual Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Dario Farina
Professor and Chair of Neurorehabilitation Engineering, Imperial College London
Title: Interfacing and Decoding Spinal Motor Neuron Activity
Time: March 11, 2026, Wednesday 1-2PM US Eastern Time
Zoom Link: https://cmu.zoom.us/j/92063156739?pwd=3bbv9ukldwoY7UvnZpWcpAAuEZ0ymq.1
Abstract: One of the main limitations in the study of human movement is our poor ability to record in vivo from a sufficiently large number of neural cells to understand population behaviours and to associate a functional meaning to the cellular mechanisms that ultimately determine a movement. This limitation, which has a direct impact in technologies for human interfacing, can now be partly overcome, at least at the last stage of neural processing of movement, that is at the level of alpha spinal motor neurons. Motor neurons receive synaptic inputs from the entire neuromuscular system and they convert it into the neural drive to muscles. The spiking activity of motor neurons can be identified from recordings of electrical activity of muscles using either wearable (non-invasive) or minimally invasive sensors. Using these technologies, motor neurons are the only neural cells whose individual activities can be studied in humans during natural behaviour, without the need for neural implants. The talk will overview the technologies for motor neuron interfacing and their use in the study of neural control of movement and in the development of new assistive technologies.
About the Speaker: Dario Farina is Full Professor and Chair of Neurorehabilitation Engineering at Imperial College London (since 2016), internationally recognised for pioneering neural interfacing, biomedical signal processing,
and neurorehabilitation engineering. Previously, he directed the Institute for Neurorehabilitation Systems at the University Medical Center Göttingen (2010–2016) and was a Full Professor at Aalborg University (2008–2010), following early appointments in Italy and France. He has authored more than 650 journal papers (including 100+ in IEEE Transactions titles), holds an h-index of 141 with approximately 69,000 citations, and has published in leading venues such as Lancet, Nature Biomedical Engineering, Science Robotics, Nature Computational Science. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Electromyography and Kinesiology (since 10 years), Associate Editor of Science Advances, Senior Editor for IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering (editor since >20 years), Associate Editor of IEEE Reviews in Biomedical Engineering, among other journals, and has been elected Fellow of IET (2026), IEEE (2018), EAMBES (2016), ISEK (2012). He holds a Honorary Doctorate degree in Medicine from Aalborg University, Denmark, and has been the recipient of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Early Career Achievement Award, the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, IEEE EMBS Technical Achievement Award, and the ISEK Basmajian award, among other recognitions. As Principal Investigator he has secured major competitive funding, including 6 ERC Grants (Advanced, Synergy, and 4 Proof of Concept). He has a strong innovation record as scientific advisor and shareholder in CTRL-Labs (acquired by Meta), ongoing advisor to Meta, founder of Neubound and AxonCtrl, and holder of patents licensed to Otto Bock and Cala Health. A dedicated mentor and educator, he has supervised more than 50 PhD graduates and mentored over 70 postdoctoral researchers.
