Joseph T. Francis graduated from the honors program in biology at the State University of New York (SUNY), Buffalo, in 1994. Subsequently he studied neural dynamics with an emphasis on nonlinear dynamical systems theory applied to the nervous system, as well as ephaptic interactions at The George Washington University, Washington, DC, where he received the Ph.D. degree, in 2000. He conducted two Postdoctoral Fellowships, the first was in computational sensorimotor control and learning under the guidance of Reza Shadmehr at Johns Hopkins University. He then moved onto brain–machine interfacing with John K. Chapin at SUNY Downstate Medical School, where he later took on a faculty position from 2006 – 2018. In 2015 he joined the University of Houston and is now a full professor in the department of Biomedical Engineering.