Kenneth P. Green

Kenneth P. Green, D.M.D., B.S., Dr. Green primarily is a Commander in the United States Navy serving as the Assistant Department Head of the Faculty Practice at the Naval Postgraduate Dental School located at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. He will soon be completing a career on August 1st that has spanned 32 years in uniform. In his undergraduate studies he became the first graduate to receive a degree in bioengineering at Syracuse University. Receiving his DMD from Boston University’s Goldman School of Graduate Dentistry, he then spent a year as a resident in the department of anesthesiology at the Boston City Hospital. After running a dental residency program in Brooklyn, NY, and in private practice in New York City, he became a Dental Officer in the Navy Reserves. Following a lifelong dream to try to reach NASA, Dr. Green switched careers and came on active duty to become a Navy Aerospace Physiologist. He served in that role and as an Aeromedical Safety Officer for more than 10 years, both training Naval Aviators and investigating human factor roles in Naval aircraft mishaps. He served with Navy and Marine Corps squadrons, in the continental US, at sea and deployed with the Marines during Operations Desert Shield and Storm. After a brief return to private practice and the Navy Reserves, Dr. Green returned to active duty, once again as a dental officer. After a tour at the Naval Hospital Jacksonville, Dr. Green took a position working at the headquarters for Navy Medicine. There he worked in several roles most recently in the Navy Surgeon General’s department which oversaw all of medical research in the Navy. During that time he experienced life as a critically ill neurosurgical patient which fortuitously led him, while lecturing on his area of expertise, team communication and mishap prevention, to a professional encounter with Dr. Kateb. This in turn led to his association with SBMT, his role expanding from an attendee at the annual meeting, to the leadership role he now has within the SBMT organization.

Andre Machado

Andre Machado, MD, PhD is the Chairman of the Neurological Institute and the Charles and Christine Carroll Family Endowed Chair in Functional Neurosurgery. Dr. Machado performs deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery for patients with Parkinson’s disease, tremor, dystonia and obsessive-compulsive disorder as well as surgical procedures for patients with trigeminal neuralgia, intractable pain syndromes and spasticity. Dr. Machado is a Professor of Neurosurgery at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and has Joint Appointments in the Departments of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering. He is the past Chairman for the Joint Pain Section of the CNS/AANS and Vice-President of the American Society of Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery. Dr. Machado is an Associate Chief of Staff at Cleveland Clinic and leads several enterprise-level projects with the Office of the Chief of Staff, including innovations in the model of care and a new program for professional career development. Dr. Machado received his medical degree from the University of Sao Paulo in 1997. He completed his residency in the same institution in 2003 and obtained his PhD in 2004. He came to Cleveland Clinic in 2004, completed his fellowship in Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery in 2006 and has been on the staff at Cleveland Clinic since then. Dr. Machado leads several deep brain stimulation and neuromodulation clinical trials as well as laboratory research. His research in deep brain stimulation for thalamic pain syndrome was awarded the National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator’s Award. His current research is aimed at developing novel treatments to promote rehabilitation after stroke and other acquired brain injuries and is funded by the NIH BRAIN initiative.

Dawn S. Eliashiv

A Professor of Neurology and Co-Director of the UCLA Seizure Disorders Center, Dr. Eliashiv sees patients and conducts research. She was one of a few clinician-scientists studying the use of magnetoencephalography (MEG)—a neuroimaging technique for mapping brain activity—as a noninvasive tool to localize seizures in the brain, and was one of the first to capture seizures with MEG. Dr. Eliashiv is an author and co-author in numerous publications and lectures extensively nationally and internationally. She is also an investigator with NINDS and American Epilepsy Society funded research. Dr. Eliashiv’s interests range from being the lead site investigator in studying responsive neurostimulation in patients with medication resistant epilepsy to utilizing computerized morphometry to identify patterns in the hippocampus when a normal brain develops epilepsy and discovering biomarkers, which will aid the development of novel interventions to prevent epilepsy, using MEG and other approaches. She also has a passion for global health. She is a commission member of the International Board of Epilepsy with collaborative research. She studied Neurocysticercosis in Peru and Ecuador, Nodding Syndrome in Uganda, as well as conducted outreach in Morocco trying to alleviate the global health burden of epilepsy.

Jennifer Fogarty

Jennifer Fogarty, Ph.D. is the Chief Scientific Officer for the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) at Baylor College of Medicine and the Director of Applied Health and Performance at Sophic Synergistics LLC. With more than twenty years of experience in medical physiology and human health and performance in extreme environments, her mission is to increase access to high-quality healthcare in space and on Earth, by empowering astronauts, patients, and medical providers with evidenced-based precision medicine and technologies. As Chief Scientist of TRISH, Dr. Fogarty leads an innovative, high-risk research and development portfolio to address space exploration’s most challenging human health and performance risks. In her role at Sophic Synergistics, a women-owned and led human-centered design firm, Dr. Fogarty guides a division focused on developing and expanding medical technologies for use in remote medicine, telemedicine, and home healthcare. As a former NASA Human Research Program Chief Scientist, Jennifer prioritized communication and collaboration between industry, academia, government, commercial spaceflight programs, and international partners. She continues to value and seek partnerships to discover and assess fundamental and mechanistic discoveries that lead to innovative prevention and treatments to sustain health and performance. Dr. Fogarty received her Ph.D. in Medical Sciences from Texas A&M University College of Medicine. Other appointments include Assistant Professor in both Baylor College of Medicine’s Center for Space Medicine and Department of Medicine; Editor of the Fundamentals of Aerospace Medicine, 4th and 5th editions; and Associate Editor for the journal npj Microgravity. Nasa videos

Julie Pilitsis

Julie G. Pilitsis, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A., is Dean of the Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine and Vice President for Medical Affairs at Florida Atlantic University (FAU). Being the first woman neurosurgeon to become a Dean, Dr. Pilitsis oversees the college’s innovative medical student and graduate medical education programs in partnership with a consortium of five regional hospitals. Dr. Pilitsis is also a board-certified practicing neurosurgeon who is a national expert in multidisciplinary pain, and movement disorders including Parkinson’s disease. As Vice President for Medical Affairs, Dr. Pilitsis is leading the FAU Health Network initiative. Under her stewardship, FAU Health Network is well positioned to promote premium academic healthcare to the community while addressing the challenges of shortages in medical workforce in the region. Guided by vision “Of the Community, For the Community”, Dr. Pilitsis’ compassionate care for patients permeates to the communities in the region, where she continues to tackle complex health challenges and create meaningful change. Prior to joining FAU, Dr. Pilitsis served as division chief of functional neurosurgery and chair and professor of the basic neuroscience department at Albany Medical College in New York. Dr. Pilitsis is the 2023 president of the North American Neuromodulation Society (NANS), the first woman ever to lead the organization. She is also President Elect of the American Society for Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery (ASSFN). She maintains an NIH sponsored research program focused on device optimization for neuromodulation and has published over 200 journal articles, 4 books, and numerous chapters.

Theodore W. Berger

Dr. Theodore W. Berger is the David Packard Professor of Engineering, Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Neuroscience, and Director of the Center for Neural Engineering at the University of Southern California. Dr. Berger received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1976, and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of California, Irvine and The Salk Institute. Dr. Berger joined the Departments of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh in 1979. While at Pittsburgh, he received a McKnight Foundation Scholar Award, twice received an NIMH Research Scientist Development Award, and was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Since 1992, he has been Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Neuroscience at the University of Southern California, and was appointed the David Packard Chair of Engineering in 2003. While at USC, Dr. Berger has received an NIMH Senior Scientist Award, was given the Lockheed Senior Research Award in 1997, and was elected a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 1998. Dr. Berger also received a Person of the Year “Impact Award” by the AARP in 2004 for his work on neural prostheses, was a National Academy of Sciences International Scientist Lecturer in 2003, and an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer in 2004-2005. Dr. Berger was elected a Senior Member of the IEEE in 2005, received a “Great Minds, Great Ideas” award from the EE Times in the same year, and in 2006 was given the USC Associates Award for Creativity in Research and Scholarship. Dr. Berger became Director of the Center for Neural Engineering in 1997, an organization which helps to unite select USC faculty with cross-disciplinary interests in neuroscience, engineering, and medicine. Dr. Berger has published over 200 journal articles and book chapters, and is the co-editor of a book published by the MIT Press on Toward Replacement Parts for the Brain: Implantable Biomimetic Electronics as Neural Prostheses. In addition, Dr. Berger will be the lead co-editor of a book soon to be published by Springer-Verlag on Brain-Computer Interfaces: An International Assessment of Research and Development Trends. The research of Dr. T.W. Berger involves the complementary use of experimental and theoretical approaches to developing biologically constrained mathematical models of mammalian neural systems. The focus of the majority of current research is the hippocampus, a neural system essential for learning and memory functions. The goal of this research is to address three general issues: (1) the relation between cellular/molecular processes, systems-level functions, and learned behavior; (2) the extent of which the functional dynamics of neural systems are altered by activity-dependent synaptic plasticity; (3) the extent to which the essential functions of a neural system can be incorporated within a hardware representation (e.g., VLSI circuitry). Experimental studies involve the use of extracellular, intracellular, and whole-cell electrophysiological recording techniques, applied in vivo using anesthetized and chronically implanted animals, and in vitro using hippocampal slice preparations. A number of neurobiological issues are being investigated, including: (1) quantifying the signal processing capabilities of hippocampal neurons and the extent to which these capabilities reflect regulation due to feedforward and feedback circuitry vs. intrinsic neuronal mechanisms, such as voltage-dependent conductances or second messenger biochemical systems; (2) the spatio-temporal distribution of activity in neural networks and its dependence on input pattern and network connectivity; (3) the cellular mechanisms underlying changes in the strength of connections among neurons, i.e., synaptic plasticity, and the influence of synaptic plasticity on signal processing characteristics of neurons and the spatio-temporal distributions of activity in networks. These and other experimental studies are used in conjunction with several different theoretical approaches to develop models of: (1) the nonlinear, input/output properties of single hippocampal neurons and circuits composed of several populations of hippocampal neurons (in collaboration with Dr. V. Marmarelis, Biomedical Engineering, USC), (2) the hierarchical relationship between synaptic and neuronal events (in collaboration with Dr. G. Chauvet, Institute for Theoretical Biology, University of Angers, France), (3) the kinetic properties of glutamatergic receptor subtypes, and (4) adaptive properties expressed by the “hippocampal-like” neural networks implemented with analog VLSI technology (in collaboration with Dr. B. Sheu, Electrical Engineering, USC).

Navid Sadoughi

ABOUT DR. NAVID SADOUGHI Dr. Navid Sadoughi, DPM holds two board certifications in foot surgery and reconstructive rearfoot and ankle surgery by the prestigious American Board of Foot & Ankle Surgery. Dr.Sadoughi believes in exhausting all conservative measures prior to adopting a surgical approach. Dr.Sadoughi employs a series of advanced modalities in the office. Dr.Sadoughi serves as chief of podiatry at White Oak Medical Center. He is a wound care panelist at its Advanced Wound Care Center. He treats complicated diabetic limbs with complex pathologies of the lower leg. He employs a series of advances treatments which include but not limited to allografts, surgical flaps coupled with external fixators to treat complex limb salvage cases. Dr.Sadoughi utilizes Minimally Invasive Surgery and techniques  to minimize scarring and reduce post-operative pain and recovery time. He offers Minimally Invasive Bunion Correction  “scarless” to his patients. This significantly reduces recovery time and scarring. Dr.Sadoughi Performs Ankle arthroscopy to treat painful ankle joints. He performs ATFL/Lateral ankle ligament instability surgeries to help patients with ankle pain and instability to return to their baseline activity. Dr.Sadoughi treats a wide range of foot and ankle problems, including fractures, sprains, ligament tears, bunions, hammertoes, plantar fasciitis, tendonitis, arthritis, and other conditions. Dr.Sadoughi treats ankle and foot fractures despite the severity of injury Dr.Sadoughi offers Total Ankle Replacement (TAR) to qualified patients. This allows his patients to retain the ankle range of motion instead of fusion.  Dr.Sadoughi believes in advanced surgical techniques and technologies to provide his patients with the best results possible.

Meet the SBMT President

SBMT President’s Message It is an incredible honor to serve as the President of the Society for Brain Mapping and Therapeutics (SBMT) Annual Meeting in Los Angeles from February 28- March 2, 2025. SBMT is a truly unique organization where scientists from various backgrounds converge on the unified goal of advancing the neurosciences.  The theme of this year’s meeting will focus on the convergence of human consciousness and neuroscientific innovation. The new era of brain-computer interface, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and robotics will completely change the landscape of healthcare.  The incredible stories of human perseverance, deep, thoughtful experiments and revolutionary therapies ultimately come from a source that is deep and personal to everyone.  It is that passion and drive that forces us to unlock our real potential for healing humanity.  The discoveries yet to unfold lie in a much deeper realm of consciousness, and we hope you will tap into that curiosity at our meeting, where the cutting edge of neuro innovation thrives. Our collective consciousness promotes diversity, curiosity, and humility to engage with the next great discovery to help humanity.  Our mission at SBMT is to travel the road less traveled and encourage cross-pollination between science, technology and human consciousness.  That realm of consciousness is where an idea to transform humanity exists, and I hope you will bring this excitement to our meeting. The 2025 SBMT meeting will have incredible speakers meant to challenge what you know, help you embrace the unknown, and leave you energized about the future.  By unlocking your imagination and curiosity, we hope to leave you as better scientists and deep thinkers for advancing the greater good of helping our patients. I truly look forward to seeing you. Warmest WishesAbilash Haridas, MD, FAANS, FCNS, FABPNSNeurosurgeon22nd President SBMTLos Angeles, California

Deborah Zelinsky

Her global reputation is due, in part, to her discovery of the use of eyeglasses to alter sound location and subsequent development of the Z-Bell Test℠.   The patented test allows Dr. Zelinsky and her team to prescribe lenses and use other optometric interventions that balance processing of central and peripheral eyesight, while synchronizing the integration between auditory and retinal sensory systems. The Mind-Eye Institute was created with the objective to make new science discoveries pertaining to eyes more accessible to patients both domestically and globally. Dr. Zelinsky’s vision is to train other eyecare professionals on enhancement of retinal processing using her patented methods, with a short-term goal to have accredited doctors practicing in most major population centers globally. The 20/20 eye testing standard is over 150 years old and does not consider the peripheral processing or auditory integration both of which are critical.  Dr. Zelinsky is pioneering a campaign to “Leave 20/20 in the 20th Century” and shift into a more updated assessment protocol including moving targets and overall awareness of surroundings.  Using brain mapping of the retina (which is comprised of brain tissue) the optometric profession can perform brain, rather than eye, examinations.  Patients needing this updated testing include those who have been diagnosed with a brain that isn’t functioning at its full potential.  This includes a wide range of issues, including genetic mutations, autism, attention problems such as ADD and ADHD, dyslexia, learning problems, concussions, and stroke among others. In addition to her work with the Mind-Eye Institute, Dr. Zelinsky is a fellow in both the College of Optometrists in Vision Development and the Neuro-Optometric Rehabilitation Association.  She is a board member of the Society for Brain Mapping and a community leader for the Society of Neuroscience. More on Deborah Zelinsky: Here

Vicky Yamamoto

Dr. Yamamoto’s pioneering work on mammalian Ryk was conducted at the laboratory of Professor David Baltimore, a Nobel laureate-1975, at California Institute of Technology. In this project, Drs. Baltimore, Yamamoto and the team have demonstrated that a Wnt co-receptor is required for stimulation of neurite outgrowth. The significant finding was published in a prestigious journal, Cell (Cell Press). This work opened new possibilities for scientists to investigate the role of Wnt signaling in cellular growth and differentiation in the central nervous system. Dr. Yamamoto received a prestigious fellowship from California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) to investigate the role of cleavage of Wnt co-receptor Ryk in regulating neuronal differentiation during cortical neurogenesis. She published her results in Developmental Cell (Cell Press), which identified a key mechanism that regulates the development of stem cells into neurons. Dr. Yamamoto’s current research at Keck School of Medicine of USC in the Department of Head and Neck Surgery focused on a) The effect of Wnt small molecule inhibitor in enhancing chemo-radiation sensitivity of cancer cells. b) Investigating the roles of cancer stem cells in head and neck cancer progression and metastasis. c) IL-6/STAT3 signaling as a therapeutic target and for early diagnosis. She has been a recipient of many prestigious awards including: an industry award, the young investigator award from Society for Brain Mapping & Therapeutics (SBMT), a pre-doctoral fellowship from The Edwin Everest Foundation, CIRM pre-doctoral fellowship from California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, as well as numerous awards from Mount St. Mary’s College including President’s Medal, Sister Rebecca Doan’s award, community service award, and the honors certificate. She graduated with Magna Cum Laude from Mount St. Mary’s College with a BS in biological sciences and a BA in chemistry. She received a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from Keck School of Medicine of USC. Dr. Yamamoto has been a founding member of the board of the Society for Brain Mapping and Therapeutics (SBMT). She has served on many committees including publication committee as a member of the editorial board and co-chaired the industry committee of SBMT where she provided a liaison with near 3,000 industry partners of the society. Dr. Yamamoto is also an active board member of the Brain Mapping Foundation.