MSc V. Abdulla

Vagif received his BSc degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Bilkent University, Turkey in 2021, and a MSc in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Connecticut, USA in 2024. He joined CogSys in November 2024 to work with Dr. Frenkel towards a PhD.

He led a funded research project at UConn to develop wireless, battery-free multimodal brain implants for optogenetics, drug delivery, and neurochemical sampling in freely behaving rodents. These devices have been used in vivo to analyze and detect up to 16 different neurotransmitters simultaneously, a first in neuroscience.

Meanwhile, his research interests evolved and he wanted to explore lower-level semiconductor based systems as opposed to embedded devices using off-the-shelf components, which he strongly believes can enable new experimental and clinical paradigms in neuroengineering. He graduated in May 2024 with an MSc degree to search for PhD opportunities in these areas.

His current research at CogSys revolve around mixed-signal neuromorphic hardware inspired by the human neocortex, hippocampal spatial coding, phase precession, spiking neural networks.

Last updated: 2 Dec 2025