ALS News Today: Brain-computer Interface to Restore Speech Named Award Winner

A neurosurgeon and his team from the University of California (UC) Davis Health have won The Herbert Pardes Clinical Research Excellence Award — given by the nonprofit Clinical Research Forum — for their work on a brain-computer interface that translates brain signals into speech with greater than 95% accuracy.

The awarded clinical research study detailed the use of this interface to restore speech in a 45-year-old man with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) who had lost the ability to communicate using his own voice. The work also was selected for a 2025 Top Ten Clinical Research Achievement Award earlier this year.

“It means a lot to us that our study was not only selected among the nation’s best published clinical research studies, but it has also won The Herbert Pardes Clinical Research Excellence Award!” David Brandman, MD, PhD, the neurosurgeon who led the study at the UC Davis neuroprosthetics lab, said in a university news story.