“Me” refers to Dr. Brendan Allison. Here’s my professional 200-word bio:
Dr. Allison has been active in EEG research for over 25 years, most of which involved brain-computer interface (BCI) systems. He earned his PhD in Cognitive Science in 2003 at UC San Diego, where he focused on BCIs based on visual attention (primarily P300) and imagined movement. He has since worked with several top researchers and institutes, including Prof. Wolpaw at the New York State Dept of Health, Prof. Polich at The Scripps Research Institute, and Profs. Pfurtscheller and Neuper at Graz University of Technology. He returned to his alma mater and is again with the Cognitive Science Dept. at UCSD.
Dr. Allison’s recent work involves extending BCI technology to help new user groups. This includes persons seeking motor rehabilitation after a stroke and persons with disorders of consciousness (DOC). Dr. Allison is also very active in volunteer efforts to make BCIs more accessible and practical for different people. He was a Founding Board Member of the BCI Society and editor of the BCI Journal and remains active with various committees and groups.
Here are some links, including social media and YouTube. The two rightmost links are academic websites with some of my BCI-related publications.
I’d also like to thank some early readers! Everyone here is an old friend and among the best-known experts in BCIs, excluding Andy, Joe, Tim, and Eric.
People who are very famous and successful but not due to their BCI careers
Andy Weir is one of today’s most popular and successful sci-fi writers. He wrote The Martian, Project Hail Mary, and a lot of other work. Andy has kindly provided feedback on all of the BCI-fi short-shorts here. However, if you don’t like my stories, don’t blame him. If you don’t like his stories, then you’re stupid. On the other hand, if you’re a fan of his work, I recommend Galactanet.
Andy and I have been close friends for decades – here’s a picture of us at UCSD with a third friend in the middle:
Joe Bauer is one of the best-known visual effects experts in the world. He won eight Emmys and was the visual effects supervisor for Game of Thrones, The Mandalorian, and numerous Star Trek series. He’s now working on the Three Body Problem.
Tim Jones (like Andy Weir) has been my friend since my freshman year at UCSD. Tim is one of Hollywood’s top music experts. He composed the music for dozens of films, including Thor:Ragnarok and Cocaine Bear. A bear with an evil BCI would be much scarier than one with cocaine. Hm.
Dr. Eric Rabkin is a retired professor of English Language and Literature. He has an amazing knowledge of science fiction. We wrote a paper together about BCI-fi that should be published soon. He also has a great series of podcasts about sci-fi.
BCI Experts
Professor Gerwin Schalk is the craziest person here. He and I have a lot of papers together – most recently a 2024 paper in Nature:
Schalk, Gerwin, Peter Brunner, Brendan Z. Allison, Surjo R. Soekadar, Cuntai Guan, Tim Denison, Jörn Rickert, and Kai J. Miller. “Translation of neurotechnologies.” Nature Reviews Bioengineering 2, no. 8 (2024): 637-652.
I interviewed Gerv here. Gerv is an Austrian weightlifter and is also not a former actor nor governor of California. When I was in Graz, I visited the Schwarzenegger museum and taped a picture of Gerv over Arnie’s picture:
That was in 2014, so I assumed that some officious Austrian removed the offending picture so it looks like this again:
Dr. Christoph Guger is the co-CEO and founder of Guger Technologies, a highly successful company that makes hardware, software, and systems for BCIs. He’s also a very prolific author in the BCI community – which is rare for people who have been so active building and managing a company. His work includes a dozen books about the BCI Research Awards that I wrote and edited with him.
Like me, Christoph loves hiking. He’s on the left of this picture. Next to him are Eric Sellers and Theresa Vaughan, who are also old friends from BCI-land, and Theresa’s husband David:
Dr. Tim Mullen is a fellow UCSD alumnus who runs a company called Intheon. Tim (like me) is a fan of Serenity, which wasn’t centered on BCIs but does include them. Here’s a picture of us hanging out in Munich in 2019:
Professor Jane Huggins also an old friend and a fan of BCI-fi. Her favorite BCI-fi is The Ship Who Sang (Anne McCaffrey) and other books in the series. We’ve done a lot of work together with the BCI Society and we’re working on another paper now.
Professor Melody Moore Jackson is my former boss. She has lived in Atlanta for most of her life and (in addition to her BCI work) has a long background with canine-computer interfaces, such as next-generation tools for assistance dogs.
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