Academic Credentials
  • Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Utah, 2020
  • M.Sc., Biomedical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Iran, 2014
  • B.Sc., Electrical and Computer Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Iran, 2011
Professional Honors
  • Kirschstein Institutional National Research Service Award (NRSA), UT, US
  • Benjamin Ph.D. Fellowship award by the state of Montana, MT, US
  • Kirschstein Institutional National Research Service Award, UT, US, Jul 2022
  • Benjamin PhD Fellowship award by the state of Montana, MT, US, Sep 2014
Professional Affiliations
  • Society for Neuroscience (SfN)
  • Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

Dr. Amir Akbarian specializes in designing studies focused on user research and human machine interaction. His area of expertise lies in the intersection of artificial intelligence, data sciences, and systems neuroscience. 

He specializes in developing machine learning-based algorithms and models to solve complex interdisciplinary problems faced in the development of emerging technologies with the goal of understanding the interaction between the brain's oscillatory and spiking activity so that it can be used by the visual system toward building a stable perception of the world; areas of focus include sensory and motor prostheses, autonomous driving, wearable consumer electronics, and therapeutic neural interfaces. He has extensive experience in developing data pipelines and models using various types of data including physiological signals, images, text, videos, OMICs data, and medical digital records.

Prior to joining Exponent, Dr. Akbarian worked as a computational neuroscientist in the Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences and Electrical Engineering Departments of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, while pursuing his Ph.D., as well as post-doc. His research has focused on the stability of visual perception during eye movements and the dynamics of the sensory information encoding in the neural activity of the brain and he has designed electrophysiology experiments to record data from the visual cortex of the brain in awake-behaving macaque monkeys. His research resulted in the discovery of a novel sensory memory in the early visual system contributing to the stability of visual perception.