Shahab Vahdat

Shahab Vahdat is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Physiology & Kinesiology at the University of Florida and a member of the BME Graduate Faculty. His research focuses on neuroplasticity mechanisms in motor learning and stroke recovery, spinal cord-brain functional neuroimaging, and optogenetic fMRI in rodents. He leads the Sensorimotor Plasticity Lab, investigating neural dynamics underlying sensorimotor adaptation and recovery after neurological injury.

Education:

• Postdoctoral Training in Neurotreatment & Pathophysiology of Ischemic Stroke, Stanford University (2018)
• Postdoctoral Training in Spinal Cord Neuroimaging & Electrophysiology, University of Montreal (2016)
• Ph.D. in Kinesiology-Movement Neuroscience, McGill University (2013)
• M.S. in Biomedical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology (2008)
• B.S. in Electrical Engineering, University of Tehran (2005)

Research Interests: His work integrates neuroimaging (fMRI), optogenetics, and computational modeling to study sensorimotor plasticity. Key areas include cerebro-spinal interactions during motor learning, neural reorganization post-stroke, and developing neuroimaging tools like spinal cord segmentation algorithms (EPISeg) and motion correction methods (DeepRetroMoCo).

Recent Article Trends: His publications emphasize spinal cord-brain connectivity, optogenetic interventions for stroke recovery, and advanced fMRI techniques. Notable work includes identifying cerebro-spinal signatures of motor learning and demonstrating brain-wide circuit reorganization via optogenetic stimulation. He also develops open-source pipelines for simultaneous spinal cord-brain fMRI analysis (FASB).

Labs/Teams: Leads the Sensorimotor Plasticity Lab, collaborating on interdisciplinary projects at the intersection of neuroscience, engineering, and rehabilitation science.