Cyberkinetics, Inc.

Dummy unit illustrating the design of a BrainGate interface

Cyberkinetics is an American company. It was cofounded by John Donoghue, Mijail Serruya, and Gerhard Friehs of Brown University and Nicho Hatsopoulos of the University of Chicago. Their work helped develop early-stage bionics in the form of implantable electronic devices and now spinoff Cyberkinetics is taking the technology several steps further. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a clinical trial to implant the BrainGate technology into five severely disabled patients to determine if they can use the technology to send simple computer commands through channeled thought.

Funding

Scientists behind the project used $9.3 million in first round funding led by Oxford Bioscience Partners. A 2002 merger with Bionic Technologies, co-founded by Brian Hatt and Richard Normann (the inventor of the Utah Array) added to a tech team armed with intellectual property rights gained from Brown, MIT, and others. They say they're three to five years away from putting a product on the market.

According to their latest SEC filing, the Founders of the company resigned from the Board of Directors at the end of October, 2008.

Merger & Renaming

In late 2004, Cyberkinetics initiated a reverse merger with a Texas company in order to gain access to the public market. The resulting company was renamed Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, Inc. and its shares are listed under the symbol CYKN.OB. it currently trades on the OTC BB (over the counter bulletin board. A.K.A "pink sheets") cyberkinetics plans to get a NYSE listing before 2010, as stated in their Q1 2007 shareholder conference.

Competitors

• Neuralynx
• Plexon Inc, Dallas, Texas
• Tucker-Davis Technologies, Florida

See also

• Brain-computer interface
• BrainGate

External links

• Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Official Website
• Donoghue Lab
• Hatsopoulos Lab