Ravi Hadimani, PhD
Dr. Hadimani an Associate Professor and the Director of the Biomagnetics Laboratory at the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering of Virginia Commonwealth University. He is currently on sabbatical as a Visiting Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, Harvard University. He has founded the IEEE Joint Magnetics and Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society’s Richmond Chapter, and he is the current vice chair of the chapter. He is an Associate Editor of the journals, Frontiers of Neuroscience and American Institute of Physics (AIP) Advances.
Dr. Hadimani’s research focuses on biomagnetic materials and devices for biomedical applications. He has developed a first-of-a-kind anatomically accurate brain phantom for validating neuromodulation procedures that are commercialized through the university spin-off company RAM Phantoms LLC. His lab has designed and fabricated a novel focal stimulation coil using ferromagnetic cores that can stimulate only a local region of the primary motor cortex of small animals. He is currently working to experimentally verify the results from coil design in rats. He is also working to establish an accurate mechanism underlying TMS by investigating the neuron’s firing patterns in several regions of the brain induced by cortical stimulation and by establishing the role of individual nuclei in affecting other nuclei of the motor circuitry. This will enable the future development of effective TMS protocols for the diagnosis and treatment of several neurological and psychiatric disorders.
Dr. Hadimani has received several international awards, including the UK Energy Innovation Award and the International Young Scientist Fellowship from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). He also received the Engineer of the Year award from the Richmond Joint Engineers’ Council in 2021. He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed original research papers, more than 210 international conference papers, 12 current and pending patents, several invited trade magazine articles, a book, and 3 book chapters to date. Dr. Hadimani has a ‘first class’ honors degree in Mechanical Engineering from Kuvempu University, India, an MS in Mechatronics from the University of Newcastle, UK, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Cardiff University, UK. He has served as a Project Scientist at the Institute of Materials Research and Innovation of the University of Bolton, UK. He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor and Associate Scientist at Iowa State University and was also an Associate at Ames Laboratory, US Dept. of Energy.