Forrest Z. Shooster graduated with a bachelors in Biomedical Engineering & Game Design and Development at the Rochester Institute of Technology with minors in Electrical Engineering (focusing on robotics, sensors, and analog electronics design) and Japanese (focused on language and philosophy). He joined the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 2021 as an NIH Medical Scientist Training Program Student in the Joint University of Pittsburgh / Carnegie Mellon University MD/PhD Program intending to study Neural Engineering during his PhD. He has rotated at Carnegie Mellon with Dr. Douglas Weber and is currently rotating with Dr. Robert Gaunt at RNEL.
Research Interest Summary
Neuroprosthetics, thermoception, microstimulation, neuromechatronics, rehabilitative games, nanoelectronics
Research Interests
Forrest is pursuing an MD-PhD with a goal of pursuing a future as a surgeon-scientist studying regenerative neural repair techniques and repair of sensory & motor functions. He is currently studying cortical white matter tracts between motor and sensory cortical regions and multi-electrode stimulation effects on sensory percepts in patients with spinal cord injury. Forrest is very interested in the relationship between perception of thermal sensations and tactile sensations and in identifying methods of restoring thermal perception in patients with partial or complete loss of thermal sensations and is exploring approaches to this problem presently.