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Event ANT Neuromeeting 2026 - Philadelphia starts on Apr 15, 2026, 3:30:00 AM (US/Eastern)
Brain Monitoring Beyond the Laboratory: fNIRS Across Disciplines and Real-World Contexts
KEYNOTE SPEAKER Neuroimaging Across Disciplines
4/15/26, 9:10 AM - 4/15/26, 10:00 AM (US/Eastern) (50 minutes)
Brain Monitoring Beyond the Laboratory: fNIRS Across Disciplines and Real-World Contexts
Hasan Ayaz, PhD
Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Science at Drexel University
Hasan Ayaz, PhD
Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Science at Drexel University
Hasan Ayaz, PhD is a Professor in the School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems at Drexel University and Director of the Neuroergonomics and Neuroengineering Lab for Brain Health and Performance Research (AyazLab.com). His research integrates wearable and mobile neuroimaging, physiological sensing, and behavioral methods to measure brain function in realistic everyday settings and translate neurophysiological evidence into improved training, clinical decision support, and human-centered system design. Over two decades, Dr. Ayaz has advanced miniaturized continuous-wave functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) for mobile neuroimaging, developing brain-monitoring systems and widely used methods for data collection, processing, and analysis adopted across university, industry, and clinical labs worldwide. He led the software development for InfraScanner, the first handheld optical brain-monitoring device for traumatic brain injury, supporting early hematoma detection and deployed in 42 countries. An internationally recognized leader in neuroergonomics, he co-founded the International Neuroergonomics Conference series and the journal Frontiers in Neuroergonomics, where he serves as Field Chief Editor, and he co-edited the Elsevier Academic Press volume Neuroergonomics: The Brain at Work and Everyday Life. His translational portfolio includes industry and government collaborations across aerospace, defense, and other sectors, as well as multi-institutional clinical research applying wearable neuroimaging in pediatric populations and across neurological and mental health conditions. He earned his BS in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Boğaziçi University and his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Drexel University.
Understanding brain function in real-world settings with complex naturalistic task scenarios is a critical next frontier for neuroscience and neurotechnology. Traditional neuroimaging methods have generated transformative insights, but most have been constrained to highly controlled laboratory environments and simplified tasks that only partially capture the demands of everyday life. Neuroergonomics has emerged to address this gap by investigating brain activity during naturalistic behavior and examining how neural processes interact with action, cognition, physiology, and the surrounding environment.

Among the tools enabling this shift, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is especially well suited for studying the brain beyond the laboratory. As a noninvasive optical neuroimaging method, fNIRS can monitor cortical hemodynamic responses during perceptual, cognitive, and motor activity, and with the recent advances in wearable, wireless, and ultra-portable systems have greatly expanded its use in ecologically valid contexts. These developments are helping overcome long-standing constraints of conventional neuroimaging and opening new opportunities for brain monitoring during realistic human activity.

This talk will highlight emerging directions in applied and translational neurotechnology, with examples spanning aerospace, medicine, education, human-machine teaming, and clinical research. I will discuss studies of cognitive workload in specialized operators, expertise development during complex visuomotor performance such as piloting and robotic control, and recent work in human-human and human-machine interaction, including interpersonal neural synchrony and brain-computer interfaces. Together, these examples illustrate how mobile neuroimaging is advancing a more naturalistic, scalable, and impactful neuroscience, bringing us closer to understanding the brain in the contexts where people actually live, work, learn, and perform.