Ceci Verbaarschot, Assistant Professor of Neurological Surgery and Biomedical Engineering, is an emerging leader in brain-computer interfacing (BCI). With her interdisciplinary expertise in artificial intelligence, neuroscience, psychology and philosophy, she develops intuitive intracortical brain-computer interfaces that can assist, restore, or enhance a person’s sensory and movement capabilities. To do so, she makes use of implanted microelectrode arrays that can both record from and stimulate the brain. Her scientific contributions have been awarded with a third place win of the Annual BCI Award (2023), as well as a first place win in the BCI Race of the international Cybathlon competition (2024) – the Olympics for assistive technology in Switzerland. Dr. Verbaarschot specializes in creating bidirectional BCIs; interfaces that can read from and write to the brain. For example, to investigate the neural communication between somatosensory and motor cortex, she developed a Guitar Hero-like game that enabled participants to ‘play’ the strings via imagined finger movements and ‘feel’ what string they play via intracortical microrecordings and -stimulation, respectively, of their brain (which was selected for a Trainee Spotlight presentation at the international BCI Society conference, 2022). In addition to the societal and clinical relevance of restoring autonomy and social interaction in individuals with limited movement capabilities, this shows how BCIs can be a powerful tool to better understand human cognition. The real-time analysis of ongoing brain activity provides the ideal means to investigate the complex relation between neural processing and conscious experience.