Resident Physician
Department of Neurosurgery, University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI, US
Ayobami L. Ward, MD, ScM, Resident Physician, Department of Neurosurgery, Post Doc in Cortical Neuroprosthetics Lab, Post Doc in Peripheral Nerve Regeneration Lab, University of Michigan
I am a resident physician training in neurosurgery. My clinical interest is in peripheral nerve and neurotrauma. My research interests lie in neuro-restorative techniques and therapies for the peripheral and central nervous system. During my dedicated research time, i have focused on two different directions. The first is an investigation into the biological basis of peripheral nerve regeneration after injury. The lens by which we investigate is the neuro inflammatory response to injury in Wallerian Degeneration. The goal of this work is to find a common, augmentable pathway to speed up PNS regeneration after injury in the lab, and apply it to humans in the clinical setting to advance regeneration after injury. The second aim of my reserach is to utilize engineering principles to create functional neuroprostheses controlled by brain machine interfaces (BMI). Using BMI, our goal is to take advantage of the peripheral nervous system which is the end effector of the CNS, and construct control systems to return functional arm and leg movement to tetraplegic patients after stroke and spinal cord injury. The field of peripheral nerve lends itself naturally to these separate, but related, endevours. The future of peripheral nerve lies in the interactions that we have with other fields of science. I believe that the peripheral nervous system holds the key to the most pressing problems that currently exist in neuroscience.
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