Thirty-two members of the University of Chicago faculty have received distinguished service professorships or named professorships, effective Jan. 1. One of our CON trainers, Nicho Hatsopoulos, is among them.
Nicho Hatsopoulos has been named the A.J. Carlson Professor in the Departments of Organismal Biology, Neurology and the College.
Hatsopoulos’ research focuses on the cortical basis of motor control and learning. His lab investigates what features of motor behavior are encoded and how this information is represented in the collective activity of large neuronal ensembles in the motor, premotor, and somatosensory cortices. They are also interested in what way these representations change as motor learning occurs.
His team’s approach has been to simultaneously record neural activity from large groups of neurons using multi-electrode arrays while performing detailed measurements of goal-directed motor behaviors of the arm, hand and tongue and to develop mathematical models that relate neural activity with behavior.
These mathematical models provide insights as to what aspects of motor behavior are encoded in cortical neurons but also can be used to decipher or “decode” neural activity to predict movement, which has practical implications for brain-machine interface development. Ultimately, this research may lead to clinically viable neural prosthetic technologies that will allow people with spinal cord injury, ALS or amputation to use brain signals to voluntarily control a device to interact with the world.
Hatsopoulos was a leading member of the first group to implant human patients with multi-electrode arrays in the motor cortex, enabling them to control external devices through thought.
Click here to see the full list of faculty members who received new named, distinguished service professorships in 2026.