Post by Tarana Nigam

A couple of months ago, I packed my entire life in Germany and moved to Houston to start a new position at Baylor College of Medicine, working in the labs of Benjamin Hayden and Sameer Sheth. Germany had been home for almost a decade, both personally and scientifically. I was incredibly fortunate to spend those years working with Caspar Schwiedrzik and many wonderful collaborators like Lucia Melloni, learning how to think about flexible cognition, plasticity of neural representations, and the remarkable adaptability of the brain. Leaving this beautiful chapter of my life behind was certainly not easy. But this big leap across the ocean was made so much smoother by the incredible people I’ve met in Houston. I’ve been impressed by the energy, dedication, and collaborative spirit of the team here. Working with the first patient a few weeks ago was a striking reminder of what becomes possible when clinicians, engineers, neuroscientists, and researchers work closely together toward a common purpose — the impact of this team goes far beyond what any individual could achieve alone. And one of the most humbling parts of this transition has been the opportunity to work closely with patients and intracranial human neuroscience data. It is hard to overstate how rare and meaningful this opportunity feels. What motivates me most is working at the intersection of basic science and translational neuroscience — trying to understand the principles of cognition and neural computation while also moving toward approaches that could ultimately have real-world patient impact. It feels like an exciting time for neuroscience and neurotechnology, where advances in large-scale neural recordings, machine learning, and computational modeling are beginning to transform our understanding of the brain and making genuinely impactful translational and clinically meaningful interventions increasingly possible. I’m very grateful to the people who helped me get here, and very excited for what comes next.