Dawn M. Taylor, Ph.D.
Associate Staff Cleveland Clinic Dept. of Neurosciences; Associate Professor Case Western Reserve University Dept of Biomedical Engineering; Research Scientist, Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center
Dr. Taylor received a Bachelor's of Fine Arts from the University of Arizona where she studied filmmaking and animation. After freelancing for a while, she got a job at Mayo Clinic as a medical artist where she got interested in both neuroscience and biomedical technology. She then went back to school part time while working to take the undergrad biology and engineering courses needed to get into the Biomedical Engineering graduate program at Arizona State University. Once in the graduate program, Dr. Taylor had the unique opportunity to work on this new concept of using neural signals in real time to control devices. She was the first to train Rhesus macaques to control the 3D movements of a cursor or robot to virtual targets using the firing rates of motor cortex neurons in real time . After getting a Master's and Doctorate degrees in Biomedical Engineering from Arizona State University, Dr. Taylor joined the Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES) Center in 2002, with the goal of applying this new brain-computer interface technology to the control of one's own arm after paralysis. She continues to work toward that goal with a large team of collaborators spanning the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center, Case Western Reserve University, University Hospitals, and the Cleveland Clinic. While her primary focus remains in restoration of brain-controlled upper limb movements, her work now spans spinal cord injury, stroke, and Parkinson's disease, and she is also developing new software and hardware tools applicable to a range of neuroscience and neurotech applications.