The University of Utah, John and Marcia Price College of Engineering and Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine proudly announce the appointment of professor Jacob A. George as the Solzbacher-Chen Endowed Professor in Electrical & Computer Engineering and Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation.
Jacob A. George
Jacob A George is an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at the University of Utah. He is the director of the Utah NeuroRobotics Lab and a foundational researcher in the Craig H. Neilsen Rehabilitation Hospital. Dr. George received his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering and a Certificate in Computational Science and Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 2016. He then received his M.S. and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Utah in 2018 and 2020, respectively. As of 2025, George has received over $7.4 million in research funding. His notable accomplishments include: the Don B. Olsen Graduate Fellowship, NSF Graduate Fellowship, NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship, CCTS Outstanding Postdoc Award, Ripple Neuro Promising Young Investigator Finalist, ECE Rising Star Award, ECE Teaching Award, College of Engineering Teaching Award, Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award, University Early Career Teaching Award, Meta Distinguished Faculty Award, Utah “Innovator of the Year” Award, and the NIH Director’s Early Independence Award.
Solzbacher-Chen Endowed Professorship in Electrical & Computer Engineering and Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
Florian Solzbacher, Gerald and Barbara Stringfellow Endowed Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Xiaoxin Chen, CEO and board member of Utah-based biotech startup Sentiomed Inc., are grateful for the decades of support from the John and Marcia Price College of Engineering and the University of Utah. Solzbacher has played a key role in developing the Utah Electrode Array into the gold-standard brain-computer interface for restoring lost function; Chen, through Sentiomed, develops biocompatible hydrogel-based technologies for implantable biomarker sensors, including intracranial pressure sensors, devices for optogenetics research and coatings for implants. Solzbacher and Chen’s joint commitment to the cause of the restoration of neural or body function lost to injury or disease, using technologies at the interface between neural and biomedical engineering, is the vision behind this endowment.
Under Solzbacher’s leadership as Chair of the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department, Jacob George helped forge the first alliance between the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation within the Craig H. Nielsen Hospital at the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine; Solzbacher and Chen see this investment in his work as a path toward Utah becoming a world-leading center in the fields of neural engineering and brain computer interface efforts. Through George’s research and mentorship, he will continue to inspire students, patients, and the general public.