# David Brandman **Entity class:** Person **Domain:** Functional Neurosurgery / Brain-Computer Interfaces **Doc Type:** Person Node **Maturity:** Developed **Collection:** [[collections/Neurotech|Neurotech]] **Primary Sources:** *Nature Medicine*, June 2026; UC Davis Health ## Definition **David Brandman is the neurosurgeon at UC Davis Health who implanted the brain-computer interface used in the corpus's longest record of independent speech restoration.** In July 2023 he placed four microelectrode arrays, 256 cortical electrodes in total, into the left precentral gyrus of [[wiki/Casey Harrell|Casey Harrell]], a participant in the [[wiki/BrainGate|BrainGate2]] trial identified as [[wiki/T15|T15]]. He co-directs the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab with [[wiki/Sergey Stavisky|Sergey Stavisky]]. Reporting described him as an assistant professor in 2024 and an associate professor in 2026. ## Work in the corpus The implant Brandman placed produced two publications: speech decoding in the *New England Journal of Medicine* (2024), and independent daily use in *Nature Medicine* (June 2026), covering more than 3,800 unsupervised hours and 1,960,163 words. UC Davis is also a site of the [[wiki/Connect-One|Connect-One]] study for the [[wiki/Paradromics Connexus|Paradromics Connexus]] device, which places one institution behind both an academic speech record and an industrial device trial. ## Reading Scaling any implanted interface requires a trained procedural workforce, and surgeons who have placed chronic arrays in speaking patients are currently a very small group. The register treats personnel movement as the most reliable way to locate capability, and treats senior clinical appointments as the highest-bandwidth technology-transfer events available. Brandman's position is the academic end of that transfer: the surgical experience that device companies recruit for when they build clinical programs. ## Research Inferences These entries translate the forward-looking register in [[research/Research Inferences|Research Inferences]] into ordinary wiki prose. The tier labels apply to the inference, not automatically to every factual anchor inside it. Proposed IDs above INF-0500 come from the 2026-10-23 cycle: [[research/Research Inferences Integration Report - 2026-10-23|Research Inferences Integration Report — 2026-10-23]] · [[research/Research Inferences Integration Audit - 2026-10-23|Research Inferences Integration Audit — 2026-10-23]]. - **INF-0060 — Plausible.** Scaling any implanted interface to millions requires a trained procedural workforce, and the endovascular route is the only one that can borrow an existing one. Workforce availability, not device manufacturing, will gate deployment volume in the 2030s. - **INF-0022 — Strongly indicated.** Locked-in patients are the population for whom the interface is the only channel, which makes them the group that will use the highest-bandwidth configurations first and longest. Clinical necessity, not enthusiasm, will produce the first humans who have lived years mediated by a decoder. - **INF-0458 — Strongly indicated.** Capability travels with people, so tracking where specific researchers work locates capability more reliably than tracking patents or publications. Personnel movement is public, dated, and rarely analyzed systematically. - **INF-0011 — Analytic.** A platform company that recruits its chief medical officer from academic neurosurgery is importing trial design and site relationships, not just clinical credibility. The Stanford-to-Austin transfer is the mechanism by which twenty years of publicly funded intracortical research becomes a private clinical program. - **INF-0021 — Analytic.** Two-participant early feasibility studies generate no statistical power and enormous engineering information. Their real output is the failure catalogue, and the company that accumulates the deepest failure catalogue across chronic human implants owns the field's actual intellectual property. ## Relationships - **institution:** UC Davis Health; co-director of the UC Davis Neuroprosthetics Lab with [[wiki/Sergey Stavisky|Sergey Stavisky]]. - **implanted:** [[wiki/Casey Harrell|Casey Harrell]] ([[wiki/T15|T15]]), July 2023. - **program:** [[wiki/BrainGate|BrainGate]] · [[wiki/BrainGate2 long-term home BCI study|BrainGate2 long-term home BCI study]] · [[wiki/BrainGate2 home BCI|BrainGate2 home BCI]]. - **site_of:** [[wiki/Connect-One|Connect-One]] (with Mass General and the University of Michigan). - **capability_class:** [[wiki/Speech Neuroprosthesis|Speech Neuroprosthesis]] · [[wiki/Speech Restoration|Speech Restoration]]. - **field_peers:** [[wiki/Frank Willett|Frank Willett]] · [[wiki/Edward Chang|Edward Chang]] · [[wiki/Matthew Willsey|Matthew Willsey]]. - **ecosystem:** [[wiki/Neurotechnology Ecosystem|Neurotechnology Ecosystem]] · [[collections/Neurotech|Neurotech]]. ## Sources - [New brain-computer interface allows man with ALS to speak again — UC Davis Health, August 2024](https://health.ucdavis.edu/research/news/headlines/new-brain-computer-interface-allows-man-with-als-to-speak-again/2024/08) - [Brain-computer interface enables independent, accurate communication for man living with ALS — UC Davis Health, June 2026](https://health.ucdavis.edu/pmr/news/headlines/brain-computer-interface-enables-independent-accurate-communication-for-man-living-with-als/2026/06) - [Novel BCI technology allows ALS patient to communicate intended speech — NeuroNews International](https://neuronewsinternational.com/novel-bci-technology-uc-davis-health-als-patient/) As of 23 October 2026.