Dr. Knight received a Physics degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology, an MD from Northwestern University Medical School, obtained Neurology training at UC San Diego and Post-Doctoral training at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. He was a Neurology faculty member at in the UC Davis School of Medicine from 1980-1998. He moved to UC Berkeley in 1998 and served as Director of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute from 2001 until 2011. He founded the UC Berkeley Center for Neural Engineering and Prosthesis and the Center for Child Development in 2011. Dr. Knight has twice been the recipient of the Jacob Javits Award from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for distinguished contributions to neurological research. He has also received the IBM Cognitive Computing Award, the German Humboldt Prize in Neurobiology, the Neurobionics Prize for contributions to Brain Machine Interface research and the Distinguished Career Contribution Award from the Cognitive Neuroscience Society. His laboratory studies neurological patients with focal cortical damage and also records electrocorticographic signals from intracranial recordings from epilepsy patients in an effort to understand the role of prefrontal cortex in organized behavior. His laboratory is also engaged in developing a speech prosthesis for use in patients with disabling neurological disorders.