As both a Core Member of the DMCBH and a Faculty Member in the SBME, Dr. Madhav will lead and encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration between scientists and research initiatives housed in these two units.
“The addition of Dr. Madhav to our BME community is really exciting,” says SBME Director Dr. Peter Zandstra. “He brings unique and highly sought-after skills and knowledge to the interface between neuroscience and robotics; his work will lead (amongst other things) to a deeper understanding of how our brains guide navigation through complex environments, and his participation in both the DMCBH and the SBME will lead to new opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation for students and researchers.”
Dr. Madhav is an engineer and roboticist turned neuroscientist who joins UBC from Johns Hopkins University (JHU) where he earned his graduate degree in Mechanical Engineering and Robotics. He then became an Assistant Research Scientist at JHU under the mentorship of Dr. James Knierim and Dr. Noah Cowan. His research focused on quantifying aspects of spatial navigation in rats by recording place cells and head direction cells, leading to the development of a custom augmented reality system that resulted in the discovery of the recalibration of the hippocampal path integrator by visual landmarks.