The Clinical Neuroengineering Training Program (CNTP) will train individuals to use inter-disciplinary approaches from the engineering-neuroscience interface to solve clinical research problems. We define clinical neuroengineering very broadly to encompass clinical and applied aspects of: neural interfacing, neuroelectronics, neuromechanical systems, neuroinformatics, neuroimaging, neuronal prosthetics, neural functions and performance, neural control, neural tissue regeneration, neural signal processing, neural modeling and neurocomputation. The CNTP will be a interdisciplinary program that builds on existing excellence across 5 colleges while providing trainees a common set of cross-disciplinary experiences. CNTP trainees will enter the program with biology or engineering backgrounds and must fulfill the requirements of an existing Ph.D. program at the University of Wisconsin. These graduate programs will provide the disciplinary excellence that trainees need to become future leaders in their respective fields. The trainee will conduct his/her PhD research on a project sponsored by a faculty trainer from the program with the additional requirement that the thesis committee have at least one faculty member from each of the broad subject areas that makeup the program: neuroscience, engineering/physical science and clinical practice. This process will ensure that the trainees will have a truly interdisciplinary research experience with broad exposure to more than one discipline. A common set of cross-disciplinary experiences will distinguish CNTP trainees from their peers; these will include a clinical neuroengineering-oriented minor course program, participation in a CNTP student seminar program. This training will incorporate appropriate clinical exposure and allow them to develop cutting edge engineering technology and incorporate it with leading neuroscience discoveries in real world clinical applications. Students will receive hands-on experience in a variety of clinical, basic neurobiology, and engineering labs. The clinical experiences will include current medical treatments for diseases such as Parkinson's, ALS, spinal cord injury, Alzheimer's, epilepsy, and peripheral nerve injury. The common experiences of CNTP trainees will ensure that all trainees, regardless of their major Ph.D. program, will be conversant in the neuroscience and engineering principles and clinical questions required to function as cross-disciplinary scientists and engineers in the 21st Century.
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