Our Team

Lauren Hammer

Lauren Hammer, MD, PhD 

Assistant Professor of Neurology

Dr. Lauren Hammer is a movement disorders neurologist and a neural engineer specializing in neuromodulation and neural interfaces. She is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is a lead faculty member in the Center for Neuroengineering and Therapeutics. Her research focuses on developing novel neuromodulation technologies for movement disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor, and cerebellar ataxia. Using invasive and non-invasive methods, she studies basal ganglia and cerebellar network dysfunction in movement disorders to advance therapies such as deep brain stimulation. Clinically, she specializes in deep brain stimulation for movement disorders and the care of patients with cerebellar ataxia. Dr. Hammer earned her BS, PhD (biomedical engineering), and MD from Northwestern University. She subsequently completed her neurology residency at Mass General Brigham and both a movement disorders clinical fellowship and postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. She is a member of the University of Pennsylvania's graduate groups in Neuroscience and Bioengineering.

Maria Shcherbakova

Maria Shcherbakova 

Staff Engineer

Maria Shcherbakova is a neuroengineer and computer scientist in the Center for Neuroengineering and Therapeutics with expertise in developing closed-loop neuromodulation technologies for movement disorders. She is currently creating and validating quantitative, physiologically grounded metrics of cerebellar ataxia severity with the goal of integrating these measures into future cerebellar neuromodulation therapies. Maria earned her BS in computer science and biomechanical engineering from Stanford University. Before joining the Hammer Lab, she contributed to the development of adaptive deep brain stimulation systems -- responsive algorithms tied to neural and behavioral biomarkers -- for Parkinson’s disease at the University of California, San Francisco, along with Dr. Hammer.

Charlotte (CJ) Abeshaus

Aaron Berson

Aaron Berson

PhD Student (Neuroscience)

Aaron Berson is a Ph.D. student in the Neuroscience Graduate Group at the University of Pennsylvania. Originally from the Bay Area in California, Aaron graduated with a B.A. in Neuroscience & Behavior from Wesleyan University (CT, USA) with a minor in Integrated Design, Engineering, Arts, & Society. Through leveraging chronic multimodal electrophysiological recordings in humans, he is interested in studying oscillatory neural circuit dynamics to improve designs of closed-loop, or adaptive, deep brain stimulation therapies for movement disorders.

Brianna Leung

Brianna Leung

Masters Student (Bioengineering)

Brianna Leung is a Master's student in Bioengineering conducting research in efficient adaptive deep brain stimulation algorithms for Parkinson's Disease. Given broad experience in academia, industry, and community health, she hopes to integrate these experiences to advance widespread access in neurotechnology. Outside of work, she sells art for animal welfare causes and is a traditional Chinese lion-dancer.

Lydia Denison

Stefan Zaharia

Aashish Codada