I am an Assistant Research Scientist in the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Iowa, where I study one of the quietest problems in neuroscience: how the brain controls breathing without us ever noticing.
Breathing sits in a strange place. It runs on its own, yet we can override it at will. It continues through sleep and altered states of consciousness, but in some people with epilepsy, respiratory control can fail catastrophically. That failure, including sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP), is part of what drives my work. Using clinically implanted intracranial electrodes, including stereoelectroencephalography (sEEG) and intracranial EEG (iEEG), I map how forebrain networks lock onto the rhythm of breathing across wakefulness, sleep, anesthesia, and mechanical ventilation. I am especially interested in the moments when brain–breathing coupling changes, weakens, or breaks down.
Email: mdrakibul-mowla(at)uiowa (dot) edu
Postdoctoral Scholar (June 2021 - June 2026), 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), Bangladesh.
Assistant Research Scientist - Department of Neurosurgery (June 2026 -- Present), University of Iowa; Iowa City, Iowa, USA
Develop and lead research on human cortical control of breathing using intracranial EEG (iEEG), stereoelectroencephalography (sEEG), and multimodal respiratory recordings from neurosurgical epilepsy participants. Design studies of brain–breathing interactions across wakefulness, sleep, anesthesia, and mechanical ventilation, with relevance to seizure-related apnea, SUDEP, and disorders of respiratory control. Develop computational pipelines for time-frequency analysis, coherence inference, connectivity modeling, and statistical analysis of neural–respiratory coupling. Contribute to research strategy, manuscript development, study design, and external funding applications in brain–body regulation and translational neuroengineering.
Postdoctoral Scholar - Department of Neurosurgery (June 2021 -- June 2026 ), University of Iowa; Iowa City, Iowa, USA
Acquired and analyzed intracranial EEG data from participants with epilepsy implanted with depth electrodes. Developed and applied computational pipelines for analyzing iEEG, respiratory airflow, thoracic effort, and autonomic biosignals. Mapped respiration-related neural networks using functional and effective connectivity analyses, contributing to high-impact research on human forebrain synchronization with breathing, including publication in Nature Communications. Investigated 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
Conducted research on adaptive closed-loop deep brain stimulation (DBS) techniques for patients with essential tremor (ET). Analyzed accelerometry data to determine tremor severity. Decoded 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.
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.