About

I am a postdoctoral research scholar in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Iowa and University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics (UIHC), where I study how the human brain controls breathing. My research uses stereoelectroencephalography (sEEG) and intracranial EEG (iEEG) recordings from neurosurgical patients to map how cortical networks — including motor, premotor, cingulate, and insular regions — exert top-down control over respiratory rhythm across wakefulness, sleep, and mechanical ventilation. This work has direct relevance to sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) and other disorders of respiratory control.

I was born and raised in Bangladesh and earned my B.Sc. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Chittagong University of Engineering & Technology (CUET) in 2010. I completed my Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Kansas State University in 2020, where my dissertation focused on brain–computer interfaces and P300-based neural signal processing. Before joining Iowa, I worked on adaptive closed-loop deep brain stimulation for essential tremor as a postdoctoral associate at the University of Florida.

My broader research interests sit at the interface of engineering and systems neuroscience: human intracranial electrophysiology, neural control of internal physiological rhythms, brain–computer interfaces, and computational methods for time-frequency and coherence analysis.

Email: mdrakibul-mowla(at)uiowa (dot) edu

Education & Training

Postdoctoral Scholar (June 2021 - Present), Department of Neurosurgery, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA
Postdoctoral Associate (June 2020 - May 2021), Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
Ph.D. in Electrical & Computer Engineering (2015-2020), Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA
BSc. in Electrical & Electronic Engineering (2006-2010), Chittagong University of Engineering & Technology (CUET), Chittagong, Bangladesh.

Work Experience

Postdoctoral Scholar - Department of Neurosurgery (June 2021 -- Present), University of Iowa; Iowa City, Iowa, USA

Acquire and analyze intracranial EEG (iEEG) data from patients with epilepsy implanted with depth electrodes in the operating room (OR). Applied electrical engineering principles—signal processing, system modeling, and estimation—to analyze intracranial EEG and respiratory biosignals. Identify respiration-related neural networks using functional and effective connectivity analyses. Investigate cortico-cortical connectivity through single-pulse electrical stimulation and evoked potential mapping.

Adjunct Instructor, - Roy J. Carver Department of Biomedical Engineering (Jan 2025 -- May 2025), University of Iowa; Iowa City, Iowa, USA

Delivered lectures and supervised laboratory sessions for BME:2200 Systems, Instrumentation, and Data Acquisition. Topics included sensors, amplifiers, signal conditioning, data acquisition hardware/software, and real-time system interfacing. Emphasized hands-on learning through lab experiments involving physiological signal acquisition (ECG, EMG, etc.)

Postdoctoral Associate - Electrical & Computer Engineering (June 2020 -- May 2021), University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA

Conducting research on adaptive closed-loop deep brain stimulation (DBS) technique for patients with essential tremor (ET). Analyzing accelerometry data to determine tremor severity. Decoding local field potentials (LFPs) to identify movement intentions.

Graduate Assistant- Electrical & Computer Engineering (Jan. 2015 -- May 2020), Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS , USA

Worked on EEG-based brain-computer interface system. Specifically, performance enhancement of the P300 speller BCIs, affect (i.e., emotion) recognition from EEG recordings. Processed EEG data (i.e., filtering, segmenting, extracting features), formal analysis, and applying machine learning methods for signal classification Setup BCI2000 software suite for data acquisition and stimulus presentation for an affect recognition experiment and a P300 face speller experiment.

Teaching Assistant

ECE431: Microcontrollers (Jan 2019 -- May 2019)
ECE 540: Applied Scientific Computing (Jan 2016 -- May 2019)
ECE519: Electric Circuits And Control (Jun 2018 -- Jul 2018)
ECE511: Circuit Theory II (Aug 2018 -- Dec 2018)
ECE431: Microcontrollers (Jan 2015 -- May 2015)

Research Assistant (July 2013 -- Oct 2014), Biomedical Engineering, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Worked on MATLAB based data synchronization for EEG acquisition using Mindo-64 coral wireless EEG.
Developed methods to remove EEG artifacts from noisy data.
Developed methods for estimating evoked potentials (EP) from EEG data.

Synergistic Activities

Peer Review Activities (Sep 2015 -- Present), Reviewed articles on the following journals:

Biomedical Signal Processing and Control
IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics
IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing
IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering
International Journal of Machine Learning and Cybernetics
Review of Scientific Instruments
Journal of Neural Engineering
Informatics in Medicine Unlocked
IET Signal Processing
IEEE Access
International Journal of Big Data and Analytics in Healthcare (IJBDAH)
Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing

Co-Chair, Research Forum Committee, Graduate Student Council (Aug 2017 -- May 2018), Kansas State University.
Member, Research Forum Committee, Graduate Student Council (Aug 2016 -- May 2017), Kansas State University.
Graduate Recruitment Ambassador, College of Engineering (Aug 2016 -- May 2017), Kansas State University.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse