Rajesh P. N. Rao

Rajesh P. N. Rao (born 2 July 1970 in Madras, India) is the Director of the NSF Center for Neurotechnology (CNT) and the Cherng Jia and Elizabeth Yun Hwang Professor of Computer Science and Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle.

In brain-computer interfacing, Prof. Rao and his collaborators were the first to demonstrate direct brain control of a humanoid robot in 2007.

[3][4] In the first demonstration of human brain-to-brain communication in August 2013, Rao wearing an electrical brain-signal reading cap triggered the movement of his colleague Andrea Stocco's hand via the Internet, allowing their brains to cooperate to solve a computer game.

[10][11] He has also given a TED talk on this topic where he backed the Dravidian hypothesis put forward by Iravatham Mahadevan.

[1] He was a Sloan Postdoctoral Fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies before joining the University of Washington faculty in 2000.