Why being in Utah changes the plan
The Utah Array was invented on this campus and two neural-interface hardware companies are thirty minutes away. Here is how to use that.
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If you were choosing a university for neuroengineering you could do a lot worse than the one you are already at. I want to lay out why, because most students in Salt Lake City do not know it and therefore do not use it.
The Utah ArrayUtah ArrayThe 10-by-10 grid of 1.5 mm silicon needles invented at the University of Utah, the electrode in nearly every human intracortical BCI study to date. Glossary entry, the electrode grid in nearly every human intracortical brain-computer interface study to date, was invented in the University of Utah’s bioengineering department. Blackrock Neurotech, the company that makes it, is in Salt Lake City. So is Ripple Neuro, which makes research recording and stimulation systems. The university has a shared nanofab where new electrodes are made, a rehabilitation hospital opened in 2020 with a technology focus, an epilepsy monitoring unit, a sleep center, and a medical device competition for students with real prize money. The full list with the reasoning for each is on the Utah map page.
What to do with it, by year
First year. Go to one Neuroscience Initiative seminar a month, sit near the front, ask one question. Do the makerspace and machine shop certifications in the first weeks. Cold email five labs from the map using the templates in the research ladder. Go to one BioUtah event; you will be the only freshman there, which is the point.
Second year. Be in a lab. Join a Bench to Bedside team in the fall. Apply for UROP so the lab position is paid. Ask the lab whether they can sponsor your nanofab user training.
Third year. Knock on Blackrock’s and Ripple’s doors, in person if possible, with a specific project you have built and characterized. Shadow in the epilepsy unit or the rehab hospital. Present a poster.
Fourth year. Convert one of the above into a job or a PhD offer.
What I would not do
I would not treat the companies as a place to apply online. Their job pages are for experienced engineers. The way in for a student is a professor who consults for them, a talk they give on campus, a tour you ask for after building something real, or a BioUtah event where you introduce yourself to three people. Specificity is what gets a reply: “I built an eight-channel ADS1299 board and measured its noise floor at 0.9 µV RMS; I would love to see how you test yours” works. “I’m interested in BCI” does not.