Cynthia Chestek

Career highlights

At the University of Michigan's College of Engineering, Chestek studies prosthetic hand control via implanted electrodes, individual finger control, and carbon fiber electrodes. Additionally, her team at the University of Michigan has come up with a way for amputees to control prosthetic devices using their brain waves. Her work also includes implantable wireless neural interface systems that reduce infection risk and expand recording capabilities in brain machine interfaces. Her lab has also developed carbon fiber electrode arrays that improve long term neural recording performance.

Chestek began researching Aplysia californica, studying brain-body systems and circuit-level control. She was a research assistant for the Stanford Department of Neurosurgery's Braingate 2 clinical trial from 2010 to 2012. Braingate 2 clinical trial was a major research initiative focused on enabling individuals with paralysis to control external devices using neural signals, advancing the development of brain and computer interface technologies. Chestek has contributed to 169 scientific publications from 2004 to 2026. Chestek attributes her career in part to her Ph.D. mentor, Krishna Shenoy, who was instrumental in guiding her to professorship. She joined the University of Michigan as a faculty member in 2012 and is currently the Associate Chair for Research in Biomedical Engineering and an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering. Chestek is a Miller Faculty Scholar at the University of Michigan