Matthew MacDougall

He completed medical school at the University of Southern CaliforniaUniversity of Southern CaliforniaThe University of Southern California (USC) is a private research university in Los Angeles, California, planned by a group led by Judge Robert Maclay Widney and opened to students in 1880.Open the full entry Keck School of Medicine, did his internship and neurosurgery residency at the University of California San Diego, then a functional neurosurgery fellowship at Stanford Medical Center, and is board-certified in neurosurgery.⁠[1]

He studied biology at Emory University, graduating with highest honors, and in 2016 became a neurosurgery fellow at Stanford, where he learned alongside neuroscientists including Jaimie Henderson and Krishna Shenoy.⁠[2]

He joined Neuralink, Elon MuskElon MuskElon Musk is an entrepreneur who founded SpaceX and has long served as chief executive of Tesla; he also took part in creating PayPal, OpenAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and xAI. He acquired Twitter in 2022, and his businesses span spaceflight, electric vehicles, energy, artificial intelligence, and social media.Open the full entry’s brain–computer interface company, in December 2017 while continuing to practice as a San Francisco neurosurgeon with Sutter Health; he had also served as a clinical instructor at Stanford Health Care and researched optical brain interfaces.⁠[3]

In July 2019 Musk publicly unveiled Neuralink at a presentation featuring MacDougall as the company’s head neurosurgeon; he said such implants could one day be as seamless as LASIK eye surgery.⁠[3]

On the Huberman Lab podcast he described Neuralink’s work on neural implants and robotics to restore movement to paralyzed patients, repair deep-brain circuitry and develop brain–machine interfaces that enhance learning and communication; he also discussed the radio chip he implanted in his own hand to open doors and communicate with devices.⁠[4]

In January 2024 he led Neuralink’s first human implant at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix; after being credentialed by the hospital he made the opening in the skull, and a surgical robot then inserted the electrode threads.⁠[2]

In Neuralink’s July 10, 2024 livestream update, he said as head of neurosurgery that the company would eliminate the post-operative air pocket seen in the first participant, insert threads deeper into brain tissue and sculpt the skull surface to reduce the gap beneath the implant.⁠[5]

He appeared alongside Elon Musk and others on the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, saying Neuralink had made great progress sewing electrodes into the spinal cord to work around spinal-cord injuries and had crudely produced walking-pattern leg movements in anesthetized animals, though the work was preliminary.⁠[6]

He serves on GESDA’s 2025/2026 Anticipation Committee for the cognitive-enhancement topic; GESDA notes that he previously worked at Stanford, UC San Diego and the California Institute of Technology, developed efficient brain–computer interface methods in several model organisms and keeps a neurosurgery practice in San Francisco.⁠[7]

On September 25, 2025, as head of neurosurgery at Neuralink and chief of neurosurgery at California Pacific Medical Center, he gave a University of Florida lecture titled Brain–Computer Interface in the Wild on new surgical techniques and human implants of high-bandwidth neural interfaces.⁠[8]

Neuralink: Official website: https://neuralink.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[4]

Sutter Health: Official website: https://www.sutterhealth.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[1]