From left, Nurmikko and Donoghue receive the B.R.A.I.N. Prize from Peres, which included a brain-shaped statue. Photograph courtesy of Chen Galili.
A group of researchers from Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, has won the $1 million Moshe Mirilashvili Memorial Fund Breakthrough Research and Innovation in Neurotechnology (B.R.A.I.N.) Prize for its work to develop the BrainGate, a brain-computer interface (BCI). The prize was awarded at Israel’s first International Brain Technology Conference held October 14-15, in Tel Aviv Port, Israel. Israeli President Shimon Peres presented the prize, including a bronze brain-shaped statue, to the two Brown researchers who represented the BrainGate collaboration in the competition, John Donoghue, PhD, co-director of the BrainGate team, a researcher at the Providence Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the Henry Merritt Wriston Professor at Brown, where he directs the Brown Institute for Brain Science, and Arto Nurmikko, PhD, the L. Herbert Ballou University professor of engineering and physics, who oversaw the device’s invention.
