Dr. Edward Chang is a neurosurgeon at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Chang is chairman of the Department of Neurological Surgery, which is ranked #1 in the nation by hospital rankings and NIH funding. Dr. Chang’s work focuses on the brain mechanisms for speech, cognition, and human emotion— some of the most defining attributes of the human mind. He and his colleagues have deciphered key elements to the neural code of speech, and were the first to restore communication of full words to a paralyzed man using advanced brain interface technologies. Dr. Chang was honored with the Blavatnik National Laureate for Life Sciences in 2015, in recognition of his fundamental contributions to science. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2020, and recipient of the Pradel Award from the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.