Mingzhou Ding

Mingzhou Ding is a Distinguished Professor and J. Crayton Pruitt Family Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida. He holds a B.S. in Astrophysics from Peking University (1982) and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Maryland (1990). His research focuses on applying engineering methods to understand neural mechanisms of cognitive functions, with expertise in multimodal neuroimaging, Granger causality analysis, and large-scale brain networks.

• Education:
  • B.S., Astrophysics, Peking University, 1982
  • Ph.D., Physics, University of Maryland, 1990

Research interests span cognitive aging, pain processing, and neural oscillations, with a focus on disorders like Parkinson’s disease. He has pioneered methods like Granger causality for analyzing brain signals and has contributed to decoding visual attention and emotional processing mechanisms. His work integrates EEG, fMRI, and MEG modalities to study brain network dynamics.

Key awards include the Pruitt Family Professorship (since 2008) and the UF Research Foundation Professorship (2013-2016). He has been recognized for mentoring excellence (2018-2019) and has served on NIH study sections and editorial boards. His recent studies explore transcranial stimulation effects on attention, AI-generated affective datasets, and brain network biomarkers for pain and cognitive decline.

Current projects include developing AI tools for neuroimaging, studying alpha oscillations’ role in default mode network modulation, and investigating neural correlates of fear conditioning in primary visual cortex.