Scott R. Ensel | Neural Engineer

About Me

Hi, nice to meet you! My name is Scott.
I'm a Research Engineer III at Boston Scientific, where I apply my background in programming and bioengineering to develop the next generation of neuromodulation technologies and advance science for life.

Before joining Boston Scientific, I completed my PhD and a postdoc in neural engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, where I focused on spinal cord stimulation, deep brain stimulation and fMRI. I bring 8+ years of experience in neuroengineering, clinical trial design, and applied machine learning for neural data. My work bridges advanced signal processing, functional neuroimaging, and neuromodulation techniques to develop therapies for motor recovery in neurological disorders like stroke, spinal cord injury, and spinal muscular atrophy.

I hope to be at the forefront of artificial intelligence capabilities and to utilize them to make the world a better place for those who are less fortunate. My inspiration for becoming a neural engineer came in 2012, during my senior year of high school, when I watched Nigel Ackland showing off his new prosthetic, the "terminator" arm.

My Hobbies

- I am obsessed with weightlifting and staying active
- I enjoy painting or doing other arts and crafts projects. Some of my projects

Favorite Quotes

"Discipline creates freedom" - Jocko Willink
"This is for shaking hands. This is for being human" - Nigel Ackland

Goals

- Become fluent in a second language
- Compete in a powerlifting competition
- Earn my blue belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu

Experience

CAREER

Boston Scientific | Research Engineer III
Valencia, California - September 2026 to Current
• Advancing next generation neuromodulation technology

Rehab Neural Engineering Laboratory | Postdoctoral Researcher
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - October 2025 to September 2026
• Piloted execution of a clinical trial using deep brain stimulation in three stroke participants to restore speech, swallowing, and movement

Rehab Neural Engineering Laboratory | PhD Research
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - September 2020 to September 2025
• Piloted design and execution of a first in-human study using spinal cord stimulation to reverse maladaptive motor and neurodegenerative effects in six spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) participants, quantified through kinematics, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging analyses
• Lead and designed imaging data collection pipeline for a pilot clinical trial of spinal cord stimulation in eight participants with stroke to regain motor function of upper limbs
• Created a novel cortico-spinal fMRI sequence for single subject assessment to sense and characterize novel biomarkers of functional brain changes in neurological disorders

Cortical Neural Prosthetics Laboratory | Directed Research
Ann Arbor, Michigan - September 2018 to July 2020
• Implemented a real-time convolutional neural network in PyTorch to decode continuous individual finger positions from non-human primate neural spiking data that achieved a 36% increase in throughput over the ReFIT Kalman Filter
• Implemented a real-time neural network in PyTorch to classify hand movement and then decode individual finger position from regenerative peripheral nerve interfaces in upper-limb amputees to control a myoelectric prosthetic
• Designed a computer network and built custom computers that integrated into current data collection pipeline to optimize neural network decoder development

Terumo Heart, Inc | Optical Engineering Intern
Ann Arbor, Michigan - May 2018 to January 2019
• Created a functional pipeline integrating advanced image segmentation techniques to automate testing of OCT and IVUS catheter imaging performance across thirteen metrics

Children's National Health System | Research Intern
Washington, D.C. - June 2016 to June 2017
• Lead collection and segmentation of radiology data in preparation for multiple research projects that applied machine learning to achieve pediatric surgical innovation

Graduate Student Instructor/Teaching Assistant
• University of Michigan - Fall 2018

- From the Big Bang to the Milky Way

• University of Maryland - Fall 2016, Fall 2015

- Computer-Aided Design in Bioengineering

- General Chemistry I Laboratory

Publications

Journal

-Prat-Ortega, G., Ensel, S., Donadio, S. et al.
"First-in-human study of epidural spinal cord stimulation in individuals with spinal muscular atrophy," Nat Med 31, 1246–1256 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-03484-8

-Christian M Simon, Nicolas Delestrée, Jacqueline Montes, Leonie Sowoidnich, Florian Gerstner, Erick Carranza, Jannik M Buettner, John G Pagiazitis, Genis Prat-Ortega, Scott Ensel, Serena Donadio, Vanessa Dreilich, Maria J Carlini, Jose L Garcia, Panagiotis Kratimenos, Wendy K Chung, Charlotte J Sumner, Louis H Weimer, Elvira Pirondini, Marco Capogrosso, Livio Pellizzoni, Darryl C De Vivo, George Z Mentis,
"Proprioceptive synaptic dysfunction is a key feature in mice and humans with spinal muscular atrophy," Brain, Volume 148, Issue 8, August 2025, Pages 2797–2811. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awaf074

-Ensel, S., Uhrig, L., Ozkirli, A. et al.
"Transient brain activity dynamics discriminate levels of consciousness during anesthesia," Commun Biol 7, 716 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-024-06335-x

-Balaguer, J.-M. et al,
"Neural mechanisms underlying the recovery of voluntary control of motoneurons after paralysis with spinal cord stimulation.," Neuron (2025). doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2025.08.023

-Marc P Powell, Nikhil Verma, Erynn Sorensen, Erick Carranza, Amy Boos, Daryl P Fields, Souvik Roy, Scott Ensel, Beatrice Barra, Jeffrey Balzer, Jeff Goldsmith, Robert M Friedlander, George F Wittenberg, Lee E Fisher, John W Krakauer, Peter C Gerszten, Elvira Pirondini, Douglas J Weber, Marco Capogrosso
"Epidural stimulation of the cervical spinal cord for post-stroke upper-limb paresis," Nat Med 29, 689–699 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-022-02202-6

-Matthew S Willsey, Samuel R Nason-Tomaszewski, Scott R Ensel, Hisham Temmar, Matthew J Mender, Joseph T Costello, Parag G Patil, Cynthia A Chestek
"Real-time brain-machine interface in non-human primates achieves high-velocity prosthetic finger movements using a shallow feedforward neural network decoder," Nat Commun 13, 6899 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-34452-w

-Antonio R Porras, Beatriz Paniagua, Scott Ensel, Robert Keating, Gary F Rogers, Andinet Enquobahrie, Marius George Linguraru
"Locally Affine Diffeomorphic Surface Registration and Its Application to Surgical Planning of Fronto-Orbital Advancement," in IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, vol. 37, no. 7, pp. 1690-1700, July 2018. doi: 10.1109/TMI.2018.2816402

Book

-Liyun Tu, Antonio R Porras, Scott Ensel, Deki Tsering, Beatriz Paniagua, Andinet Enquobahrie, Albert Oh, Robert Keating, Gary F Rogers, Marius George Linguraru
"Intracranial volume quantification from 3D photography," in Computer Assisted and Robotic Endoscopy and Clinical Image-Based Procedures, Cham, Switzerland:Springer, vol. 10550, pp. 116-123, 2017.

Conference

-Pooneh R Tabrizi, Rawad Obeid, Awais Mansoor, Scott Ensel, Juan J Cerrolaza, Anna Penn, Marius George Linguraru
"Cranial ultrasound-based prediction of post hemorrhagic hydrocephalus outcome in premature neonates with intraventricular hemorrhage," 2017 39th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), Seogwipo, 2017, pp. 169-172. doi: 10.1109/EMBC.2017.8036789

-Antonio R Porras, Beatriz Paniagua, Andinet Enquobahrie, Scott Ensel, Hina Shah, Robert Keating, Gary F Rogers, Marius George Linguraru
"Locally affine diffeomorphic surface registration for planning of metopic craniosynostosis surgery," In: Descoteaux M., Maier-Hein L., Franz A., Jannin P., Collins D., Duchesne S. (eds) Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention − MICCAI 2017. MICCAI 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 10434. Springer, Cham

Projects

Innovation-Driven Co-Activation Patterns in Python (iCAPy)

-Translated iCAP toolbox from Matlab to Python
-Implemented parallel processing and GPU processing architecture for a 10x speedup per subject analyzed (10 hours -> 1 hour)

February 2026

More information available at:
GitHub

Continuous Decoding of Myoelectric Signals using Time Latent Variable Models

-Implemented state of the art deep learning architectures to map noisy EMG signals to prosthetic movements
-Presented data to support deep learning models are more effective at predicting finger positions than previous decoding efforts

January 2019 - April 2019

More information available at:
GitHub, Report and Poster

Electrochromic Light Shielding Device

- Designed a new electrochromic device for neonatal incubators
- Transparency values range from 50% to 90% based on differing voltages

August 2016 - May 2017

More information available at:
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Scott Ryan Ensel

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