Artificial Intelligence > The Architect

The Architect

By Alison Caldwell, Ph.D. Photography by Paul Flessland

For Sean Pittock, M.D., Glenn W. and Katherine K. Hasse Chair of Neurology and Applebaum Family Professor of Neurosciences, BIONIC represents the natural evolution of work he's championed for nearly two decades.

In 2006, Dr. Pittock established the first dedicated Autoimmune Neurology Clinic in the United States — a multidisciplinary practice built on a transformative insight: that many conditions dismissed as untreatable neurodegenerative diseases were actually reversible autoimmune disorders responsive to immunotherapy. His approach has always been translational, extending laboratory discoveries directly to patient care.

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As a director of Mayo Clinic's Neuroimmunology Laboratory, he has spent the last decade building multidisciplinary teams focused on Mayo Clinic’s Connect to Cure initiative. He has built his career on finding biomarkers that allow clinicians to intervene before irreversible damage occurs.

Now, with BIONIC, Dr. Pittock sees an opportunity to apply that same philosophy to the brain's electrical signals.

[Electrical signaling data] is an underused biological resource, and one of our major goals is to harmonize all of that data in a new sort of biobank.
— Sean Pittock, M.D.

"A lot of electrical signaling data is already collected as a routine part of neurological diagnostics and surgical care," he says. "Really, it's an underused biological resource, and one of our major goals is to harmonize all of that data in a new sort of biobank."

For Dr. Pittock, collecting and interpreting this electrical data, particularly how signals change with aging or disease, is crucial for detecting conditions early enough to make a difference.