Speakers and Faculty


The 2019 NYC Neuromodulation Conference and Neuromodulation: The Science bring together leaders across neuromodulation, pain management, healthcare, and wearables. This unparalleled collection of thought leaders supports an engaging program spanning three days (October 4-6, 2019) with an additional one day of Preconference Workshops (October 3, 2019). See all speakers >>

Sarah Laszlo, PhD

Sarah Laszlo, PhD

Sarah is a senior research scientist working across many early stage teams at X, the moonshot factory. She holds a bachelor's degree in Brain and Cognitive Science from MIT, where she was Phi Beta Kappa and winner of the Hans Lukas Teuber award for scholarly excellence. She completed her master's and doctoral degree in Brain and Cognition at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Subsequently she was an NIH-NRSA postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University for two years, where her research focused on neurally plausible computational models of language comprehension. Sarah was a tenured professor of psychology and linguistics at Binghamton University, where she led the largest study ever conducted of brain development during reading acquisition, prior to leaving academia for industry. Sarah and her research have been featured on NPR’s Science Friday, as well as Wired, Scientific American, and the Huffington Post. Her research interests include neuromorphic computing, brain computer interface, and natural language processing.

Interview with Sarah Laszlo, PhD

What are the most innovative or important ideas you want to share at your talk at the conference?

SL: Big data is relevant to neuromodulation. The reason I think this is important to share is that, for the large part, current neuromodulation studies are individually small in size and thus sometimes hard to imagine generalizing; or, put another way, it's hard to know currently how much individual differences impact the way that neuromodulation effects behavior or mood. I think that in the future we will see big data coming even to this corner of cognitive neuroscience, and I am so excited for that to happen because I think the potential for very targeted, impactful, therapies is enormous.

What are you most excited about (or looking forward to) at NTS/NYN Napa?

SL: I'm looking forward to hearing talks about the state of the art! Neuromodulation has become such a hot topic so fast that it is really hard to keep up with. I'm excited to get to listen to a curated group of participants talk about the top work.

Either based on your own research, or on broader emerging brain interfacing technologies, where do you see the most potential for new technology to impact society and healthcare in the next 5 years?

SL: I am excited for "closed loop" neuromodulation technologies. That is, technologies that go beyond stimulation to a cycle of stimulation -> measurement -> new, more targeted, stimulation. I think that closing the loop will accelerate the impact of neuromodulation.