BIOGRAPHY
Maysam is a postdoctoral research associate working with Michel Maharbiz and Tim Blanche on developing next generation high density nano neural interfaces.

Maysam received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2012. His Ph.D. thesis was on developing novel hybrid plasmonic-photonic on-chip biochemical sensors. Maysam received his M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering majoring in Microsystems from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2008. He has also received a M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering majoring in microwaves and optics from Sharif University in 2005. He received his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering in 2003 from Tehran Polytechnique (AmirKabirUniversity). Maysam has published more than 25 Journal and conference papers. He is the recipient of the Sigma Xi best thesis award from Georgia Institute of Technology. He has received and has been nominated for a number of awards such as the SPIE research excellence award, GTRIC innovation award, OSA Emil Wolf best paper award, and Edison innovation award.

Maysam’s current active research is on the design and implementation of next generation optoelectrical integrated neural interfaces to explore and control the brain activity.

A Modular System for High-Density, Multi-Scale Electrophysiology [BPN699]
Truly large-scale electrophysiology simultaneous recording of thousands of individual neurons in multiple brain areas remains an elusive goal of systems neuroscience. The traditional approach of studying single neurons in isolation assumes that the brain can be understood one component at a time. However, in order to fully understand the function of whole brain circuits it is essential to observe the interactions of large numbers of neurons in multiple brain areas simultaneously with high spatiotemporal resolution. This project will establish a complete system for multi-scale electrophysiology in awake, freely behaving mice, using state-of-the-art nano neural interfaces comprising of tiny silicon probes integrated with on- chip optical waveguides and compliant monolithic polymer cables connected a unique light- weight head-mounted recording system built around a commercially available application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) that has been custom designed for electrophysiological recordings, combining signal amplification, filtering, signal multiplexing, and digital sampling on a single chip. With this technology, optogenetic excitation or inhibition of neurons can occur simultaneously with the recording of large ensembles of individual neurons in many different brain regions. The diminutive size of the proposed instrument will revolutionize studies of the neuronal correlates of behavior, especially in small animals such as mice. Beyond fundamental neuroscience research, results from this project will further advance the development of next- generation neural prosthetic devices.