by Lia Unrau
With a promising approach to drive brain repair and recovery following a stroke, University of Washington neuroengineer Azadeh Yazdan has earned the American Heart Association (AHA) Career Development Award. Yazdan’s neural engineering technologies and new brain stimulation-based therapies have the potential to help restore function and movement in people who have had a stroke – something that happens every 40 seconds in the United States.
“We’re combining novel neural technologies with advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning to precisely stimulate neural activity to rewire the brain,” said Yazdan, the Washington Research Foundation Innovation Assistant Professor of Neuroengineering in the departments of bioengineering and of electrical and computer engineering.
Yazdan is a core scientist with the Washington National Primate Research Center, and an investigator with the UW’s Center for Neurotechnology and Weill Neurohub, a research collaboration among UW, University of California (UC), Berkeley, and UC, San Francisco. In 2021, she received a $3.2M, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to further advance her work in functional recovery after a stroke. The UW College of Engineering honored her this spring with the 2022 Junior Faculty Award.