2026 Marilyn E. Demorest Award for Faculty Advancement
Ramana Vinjamuri
Associate Professor, Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
Dr. Ramana Vinjamuri is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). He serves as the UMBC Site Director for the NSF Industry–University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) BRAIN—Building Reliable Advances and Innovations in Neurotechnologies—and leads the Sensorimotor Control Laboratory (Vinjamuri Lab). His research focuses on sensorimotor control, brain–computer interfaces, rehabilitation robotics, exoskeletons, human–robot collaboration, and neurotechnologies for rehabilitation and mental health. Dr. Vinjamuri’s research program is supported by multiple federal agencies, foundations, and innovation programs, including the National Science Foundation (NSF CAREER Award, NSF I-Corps, NSF IUCRC), the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research – Small Business Innovation Research, the United States–India Science and Technology Endowment Fund, the New Jersey Health Foundation, and several UMBC innovation initiatives. In addition to his research leadership, Dr. Vinjamuri plays an active role in interdisciplinary health research and academic collaboration. He serves as the Director of the Cyber & AI Core within the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB)–UMBC Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR), where he supports clinical and translational research. He is also an Affiliate Faculty member of the Public Health Research Center (PHRC) in UMBC’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, contributing engineering and neurotechnology perspectives to public health research initiatives.
His translational contributions in synergy-based hand control, rehabilitation robotics, and multimodal neural interfaces have been recognized through numerous honors, including the Mary E. Switzer Merit Fellowship from NIDILRR (2010), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Senior Membership (2011), the Harvey N. Davis Distinguished Teaching Award from Stevens Institute of Technology (2018), and the NSF CAREER Award (2019). He was recently named one of Technical.ly’s 2025 RealLIST Innovators in Maryland.
Dr. Vinjamuri also serves as a Visiting Scientist at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the National Institutes of Health, where he advances neurotechnology and mental-health innovation. Internationally, he holds adjunct appointments at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad and Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) in India, where he teaches short-format fractal credit courses during summer and intersession periods, strengthening global training pipelines in neuroengineering and robotics, strengthening UMBC’s international research footprint.
A highly engaged member of the neuroengineering community, Dr. Vinjamuri chaired the IEEE Brain Workshop at the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) 2023 and BMES 2024, and contributes broadly through editorial service, conference organization, and global research collaborations.