Karen Schroeder

Research scientist at Basis Research Institute.

I'm a research scientist and engineer working in AI, neuroAI, and brain-computer interfaces.

I manage research operations at Basis Research Institute, a nonprofit AI research organization. I work on scaling the organization, meta-science for AI research, and basic research on world model learning.

My scientific background spans both the engineering and scientific sides of neurotechnology. As a postdoc in Mark Churchland's lab at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute, I developed cortical brain-computer interface control algorithms in primates. Before that, I earned my PhD in Cindy Chestek's neuroprosthetics lab at the University of Michigan, where I focused on neural decoding for prosthetic finger control and neural probe fabrication.

In my free time, I like to eat my way around New York City.

For a full list of papers and patents, see my Google Scholar. Selected work below, organized by research area.

Meta-science

  • NeuroAI for AI Safety
    P Mineault, N Zanichelli, JZ Peng, A Arkhipov, E Bingham, J Jara-Ettinger, E Mackevicius, A Marblestone, M Mattar, A Payne, S Sanborn, KE Schroeder, Z Tavares, A Tolias, A Zador
    arXiv preprint, 2024
    arXiv Blog post

AI & World Models

  • Benchmarking World-Model Learning
    A Warrier, D Nguyen, M Naim, M Jain, Y Liang, KE Schroeder, C Yang, JB Tenenbaum, S Vollmer, K Ellis, Z Tavares
    arXiv preprint, 2025
    arXiv

Brain-Computer Interfaces & Computational Neuroscience

  • Cortical control of virtual self-motion using task-specific subspaces
    KE Schroeder, SM Perkins, Q Wang, MM Churchland
    Journal of Neuroscience, 42(2):220–239, 2022
    Paper PubMed
  • Systems, methods, and media for decoding observed spike counts for spiking cells
    S Perkins, MM Churchland, KE Schroeder, JP Cunningham
    US Patent 11,429,847, 2022
    Patent
  • Chronic recording of hand prosthesis control signals via a regenerative peripheral nerve interface in a rhesus macaque
    ZT Irwin, KE Schroeder, PP Vu, DM Tat, AJ Bullard, SL Woo, IC Sando, MG Urbanchek, PS Cederna, CA Chestek
    Journal of Neural Engineering, 13(4):046007, 2016
    Paper PubMed