Dr. Jiang’s research leverages signal processing methods and artificial intelligence algorithms for biological signals, such as Electroencephalogram (EEG) and Electromyography (EMG), for neurorehabilitation engineering applications. In particular, his research focuses on new human-machine interfacing (HMI) technologies, including brain-computer interfaces (BCI) and muscle-man-interfaces (MMI). His innovations have resulted in new and more efficient upper limb prosthetic control technologies and accelerated rehabilitation of motor functions for patients suffering from disorders, such as stroke. His research has also been applied more broadly, to HMI for applications in kinesiology, neural plasticity (cortical and peripheral), ergonomics and other related areas. These contributions have not only advanced the scientific knowledge of the field but have also achieved direct impacts on the biomedical industry as described below.

To date, Dr. Jiang has authored and co-authored 62 refereed journal papers and 62 full-length conference papers and extended abstracts, primarily within the top-most venues for the biomedical engineering, neurorehabilitation, neurophysiology, signal processing, machine intelligence and related disciplines. Nearly half of his journal papers were published in EMBS’ transactions and journals. These contributions’ impact is clear from the citation record (Web of science: 1179, H-index: 20, Google: 2392, H-index 25), and the invitations to present his work at 11 different international conferences, as plenary speaker, workshop speaker, etc.

Dr. Jiang’s research in surface EMG processing and advanced myoelectric control has opened up a new direction in the field of myoelectric control: simultaneous and proportional prosthetic control. This topic has become one of the fastest growing research directions in the field in the last decade, and Dr. Jiang’s papers in the area are among the most cited and the proposed methods are under commercialization path (more details in the table below). Dr. Jiang’s research in independent BCI-based stroke rehabilitation has also attracted global attention. His non-invasive, hundred-ms delay close-loop BCI system can induce cortical plasticity in a human within one hour, orders of magnitude faster than the current state-of-the-art, which requires weeks. It is one of the most promising technologies for the future in BCI. As a result, Dr. Jiang was a Top 10 Finalist for the Annual BCI Award in five consecutive years, winning the first place in 2017.

Since he started his independent academic career in 2015, Dr. Jiang secured over $1.4 million (CAD) direction research fund in peer-reviewed competitions to support his program (as PI and co-PI). One of these grants was the NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplement, awarded to only 4% of thousands of applicants in the annual competition nationally, and was rarely awarded to first-time early career applicants. Dr. Jiang was also recently awarded the highly competitive 2018 Early Researcher Award by the Province of Ontario Ministry of Research, Innovation, and Science.

Dr. Jiang has supervised and co-supervised four post-doctoral fellows, six Ph.D., 21 Master’s, and 14 undergraduate students. Five Ph.D. students under his day-to-day supervision have successfully defended their Ph.D. degrees. The vast majority of these 40+ early stage researchers have moved on to research positions in academia, government or the private sector.

Dr. Jiang’s service to the scientific and engineering community has been extensive, including as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Journal in Biomedical and Health Informatics, the Brain-Computer Interfaces, and Frontiers in Neuroengineering. He also Co-Chaired the Neurorehabilitation and Prosthetics Symposium at the IEEE International Neural Engineering Conference (2017), was Track Chair of the Myoelectric Control Symposium (2017), was Associate Editor for the IEEE International Conference of Robotics and Automation (2016), and will Co-Chair the upcoming workshop on BCI in aging research at the IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (2018). He was elevated to Senior Member of IEEE/EMBS in 2014.