Biography
Matthew attended MIT where he received B.S. and M.Eng. degrees in Electrical Engineering with a research focus in digital signal processing. He later attended medical school at Baylor College of Medicine and completed his neurosurgery residency at the University of Michigan in 2022. He completed a PhD in Biomedical Engineering during his 2-year resident research time plus an additional leave-of-absence year. His research focused on intracortical brain-computer interfaces, computational neuroscience, and neuromodulation. After graduation, he completed a one-year, post-graduate appointment as a clinical instructor stereotactic/functional neurosurgery and epilepsy at Stanford University where he conducted research in the Neural Prosthetics Translational Lab directed by Dr. Jaimie Henderson.
He is currently an assistant professor of neurosurgery and biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan and is core faculty in the neural engineering cluster of the Biointerfaces Institute and Michigan Neuroscience Institute Affiliate.
Areas of Interest
Brain-computer interfaces, neuromodulation (deep brain stimulation and spinal cord stimulation), and computational neuroscience.
Honors & Awards
- Provost Neuroscience Scholar, University of Michigan, 2024
- John E. McGillicuddy Resident Leadership Award, University of Michigan, 2022
- Siebel Scholar, 2005
Published Articles or Reviews
- Willsey MS, Shah NP, Avansino DT, Hahn NV, Jamiolkowski RM, Kamdar FB, et al. A real-time, high-performance brain-computer interface for finger decoding and quadcopter control. bioRxiv. 2024:2024.02.06.578107.
- Willsey MS, Nason SR, Ensel SR, Temmar H, Mender MJ, Costello JT, et al. Real-time brain-machine interface achieves high-velocity prosthetic finger movements using a biologically-inspired neural network decoder. Nature Communications. 2022;13(6889).
- Nason SR, Vaskov AK, Willsey MS, Welle EJ, An H, Vu PP, et al. A low-power band of neuronal spiking activity dominated by local single units improves the performance of brain–machine interfaces. Nature biomedical engineering. 2020;4(10):973-83.
- Willsey MS, Lu CW, Nason SR, Malaga KA, Lempka SF, Chestek CA, et al. Distinct perceptive pathways selected with tonic and bursting patterns of thalamic stimulation. Brain Stimul. 2020;13(5):1436-45.