The Map
Know the territory, set up the bench, agree on safety, learn to keep a notebook.
Everything here is short and most of it is reference. Read the six territories and the six spines once, do the safety charter properly, and set up the smallest bench that lets you start Phase 1 this week.
Most courses begin with theory and end, if ever, with a project. This one is upside down on purpose. In Phase 1 you will hear a neuron and see your own brain rhythm before you have been told what either one is. The theory comes after, and it lands differently when it explains something you have already watched happen on your own bench.
Phase 0 exists so that Phase 1 can start this week. It is a map of the field, a shopping list, a set of safety rules, and a way of writing things down. Skim the map, do the safety page slowly, and buy or borrow the smallest bench that gets you to the first project.
How to use the site
Every page has the same shape. A project page tells you what you will see or hear, how long it takes, what it costs, and then the steps. An explainer opens with something you have already seen and works backward to why. Deep dives are collapsed with their time cost written on them; open them or not. Terms with a dotted underline show a one-sentence definition when you hover or tap. Notes in the margin are optional. A line that says “you can stop here” means it.
The header has three switches. Skim, Read, Deep sets how much of an explainer you see. Bench strips a project page to steps, parts, and safety in big type, for a phone at the soldering iron. Field notes appears on pages where someone has recorded what actually happened when they built the thing.
Progress on this site is a list of things you have made: a plot, a measured number, a build log. There are no points and no streaks. A recall prompt in a lesson, once you answer it, enters a review queue that resurfaces it days later, which is the single most effective study technique there is and the one almost nobody uses.
Order
Read the territories and the spines first, then the Utah map, because it changes what the rest of the site means for someone in Salt Lake City. Then the bench tiers and the safety charter. The two “how to read” pages can wait until you have a datasheet or a paper in front of you.
Explainers
Theory that attaches to what you just built. Read after doing.The six territories of neuroengineering
"Brain waves" is one small corner of the field. Here is the whole map, and the careers each part leads to.
ExplainerThe six spines, and why you need one
Biomedical engineering is wide and shallow by design. The students who win pick one deep, hirable skill and use BME as the wings.
Skills
Hand skills and software skills picked up along the way.The notebook, and the build log
How to write things down so that a plot from March still means something in November, and how a notebook entry becomes a build log on this site.
SkillHow to read a datasheet
The manufacturer's document for a chip is long, and you need about four pages of it. Here is which four, and what the numbers on them mean.
SkillHow to read a paper
A method that takes fifteen minutes per paper and leaves a five-line summary you can find again. One a week for four years is two hundred papers.
Reference
Look-up pages.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.
ReferenceSet up a bench
From zero dollars to a real instrument, in tiers. Buy the smallest one that lets you start this week.
ReferenceThe safety charter
Two rules you will never break, and the reasoning behind each. The seriousness with which you treat this is itself a credential.
Ready for Phase 1 when
Checks save on this deviceWhat an interviewer would ask
If you can answer these, you are done here- Why does biomedical engineering need a spine, and which one are you leaning toward and why?
- What is the difference between EEG, ECoG, and intracortical recording, in one sentence each?