Our Team

Principal Investigator

Leonardo G Cohen, MD
Leonardo G Cohen, MD
Senior Investigator
cohenl@ninds.nih.gov

Dr. Cohen received his MD from the University of Buenos Aires. He did his neurology residency at Georgetown University and received postdoctoral training in Clinical Neurophysiology at the Department of Neurology, University of California (Irvine) and in Motor Control and Movement Disorders at the Human Motor Control Section, NINDS.

In 1998, Dr. Cohen became chief of the Human Cortical Physiology Section, NINDS. He is a recipient of the prestigious Humboldt Award (Humboldt Foundation) and Barbro B Johansson Award in Stroke Recovery (World Stroke Organization), and is an elected member of the American Neurological Association.

Staff

Photo of Ethan R Buch
Ethan R Buch, PhD
Staff Scientist
ethan.buch@nih.gov
Dr. Buch completed his undergraduate and master’s degree at the University of Maryland, College Park, and received his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in 2012 where he investigated brain network interactions underlying reaching and grasping behaviors in humans with Dr. Matthew Rushworth. He completed postdoctoral training under Dr. Leonardo Cohen where he pursued the use of brain-computer interface (BCI) approaches for the rehabilitation of hand motor function in patients following stroke (NINDS IRP) and traumatic brain injury (Center for Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine). In 2016, Dr. Buch was appointed as Staff Scientist of the Human Cortical Physiology and Neurorehabilitation Section. 

 

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Tasneem Malik, FNP-BC
Nurse Practitioner
tasneem.malik@nih.gov
Tasneem Malik received her Master of Science degree in Nursing from Emory University in 2015.  She also has a Master of Public Health degree from the University of California, Los Angeles.  She is a board certified Family Nurse Practitioner and worked in occupational health and primary care for 6 years before joining NIH in 2022.  In addition to her clinical experience, she has over twenty years of public health experience with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Los Angeles County Department of Health focusing on vaccine preventable diseases, HIV and STD prevention programs, and antenatal surveillance, testing, and prevention of hepatitis B virus and congenital syphilis. 
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Michele Richman
Regulatory Specialist
michele.richman@nih.gov
Michele Richman provides regulatory support to all HCPS research projects. Prior to joining HCPS in 2019, Ms. Richman had over 9 years of experience working with the IRB of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). 

 

 

Clinical Fellows

Photo of William Hayward
William Hayward, MD, PhD
william.hayward@nih.gov
Dr. Hayward completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Miami (FL), and obtained his M.D. and Ph.D. from the Georgetown University Medical School.   He completed his clinical training in the MedStar Georgetown-NIH Neurology Residency Program. Dr. Hayward's research interests include understanding how non-invasive brain-state dependent stimulation can improve rehabilitation outcomes following brain injury or disease.  

Postdoctoral Fellows

 

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Debadatta (Dave) Dash, PhD
dave.dash@nih.gov

Dr. Dash received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin where he developed machine learning (ML) techniques for decoding imagined and overt speech from magnetoencephalography (MEG) brain activity recordings in healthy participants and ALS patients. His current work focuses on motor memory consolidation and neural replay in skill learning in both healthy adults and chronic stroke patients.

Photo of Fumiaki Iwane
Fumiaki Iwane, PhD
fumi.iwane@nih.gov
Dr. Iwane received his Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from Kumamoto National College of Technology, Master’s degree in Engineering from the Nara Institute of Science and Technology and Ph.D. in Neural Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. His current work focuses on how brain activity predicts erroneous actions in skill learning.
Photo of Roberto Felipe Salamanca-Giron
Roberto Felipe Salamanca-Girón, PhD
rob.salamancagiron@nih.gov
Dr. Salamanca-Girón obtained his degree in Electronics Engineering from Colombia’s National University in 2015, his master’s in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Paris Cité in 2017 and his PhD in Neural Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 2021. His current work aims at developing novel non-invasive, biologically inspired, closed-loop brain stimulation interventions used for neurorehabilitation applications in patients with brain injury or disease such as stroke. 
   

 

Predoctoral Fellows

Photo of William Kistler
William Kistler
william.kistler@nih.gov
William Kistler received his undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland, College Park. He is currently working under the guidance of Dr. Cohen and Dr. Sven Bestmann (UCL) as a student in the UCL-NIMH Joint Doctoral Program in Neuroscience. The focus of his thesis work is identifying the kinematic changes that drive early skill learning with the aim of optimizing rehabilitation interventions for persons affected by chronic stroke.

Visiting Fellows