The Journey of an Engineer, Mathematician, and Neuroscientist

In this episode, we discuss what was important to Pedro early in his career. He describes his first forays into clinical use of EEG back in the 70s and then we go on to discuss some of his highly creative work in deeply interpreting EEG signals today. Later we discuss his current visiting position in Chengdu, China and a growing EEG database as well as his international consortium. We touch briefly on the current state of medical care in Cuba as well as how Cuba has dealt with COVID-19. This episode was recorded on October 22nd 2021. 

Guest: 

Pedro Valdes-Sosa is the General Vice-Director for Research of the Cuban Neurosciences Center, which he co-founded in 1990. He studied medicine at the University of Havana, and graduated in 1972. He also studied Mathematics in 1973. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1978. In 1979 he did a PostDoc on "Neurometrics and Computational Techniques" and "Biophysical Modeling of brain electrical activity" with Prof. E. Roy John at the Brain Research Lab of New York University. He is a full member of the Cuban Academy of Sciences, and the Latin American Academy of Sciences, associate member of the International Center for Theoretical Physics.

Pedro is known not only for his innovation and rigor in EEG analysis but also for his highly collaborative work and passion to improve science development, communication and dissemination in less developed countries. He’s currently flying back and forth between Havana and Chengdu, China where he is developing pooled databases for quantitative EEG.