Michael Bono

Why I Started

BNS began as a passion project inspired by my maternal grandmother and paternal grandfather. I wanted to preserve their memories and stories in a way that honors who they are and the love they've given me throughout my life. That mission grew into cNDT.

I love my family very much. They support and spoil me, and I look forward to the day I can pay them back for the love they've given me. Having them in my corner means a great deal to me.

Research-Stage Work

What I'm Building

BNS Atlas

With BNS Atlas, I'm investigating whether a person's own brain imaging could help reduce the calibration burden of neural interfaces. Atlas uses that imaging to guide which recording channels a neural decoder uses, with applicability checks to determine when guidance should be withheld. I've developed and evaluated the approach across public iEEG and MEG datasets. The findings are exploratory and mixed, and I'm interested in testing whether and where the approach could be useful alongside existing decoders.

How I Picture Atlas

I think of Atlas like a personalized GPS for neural decoders. A person's brain imaging provides the map, and the locations of their recording contacts show where signals can be collected. Atlas uses that spatial information to suggest which contacts the decoder should use.

If its applicability checks fail, Atlas withholds that guidance and falls back to the full recording array. The goal is to help an existing decoder reach useful performance with less calibration.

BNS cNDT

BNS cNDT (Cognitive Neural Digital Twin) is a platform I'm developing to bring together neuroimaging, neural recordings, and structured autobiographical information in an evolving, person-specific model. The architecture is being developed to keep recorded measurements, personal accounts, and AI-generated inferences distinct. Those inferences would be limited to the neural side of the model and derived from the person's available neuroimaging.

How I Picture cNDT

I think of cNDT like a painting. On the neural side, brain imaging modalities and neural recordings each contribute different information, filling in details that another might not capture. On the cognitive side, a person's memories, stories, experiences, and personal context add further layers through interviews and other personal records.

Bringing these pieces together is how I envision building a fuller picture of the person, with the potential to preserve something meaningful about their life as a digital legacy.

The cognitive side of cNDT is limited to what the person is comfortable sharing. I approach that through an honor system grounded in respect for their privacy, boundaries, and wishes. (I can't stress this enough.)

How I'm Building My Company

I use AI throughout my research, development, analysis, and writing. It helps me research an idea, develop a plan, and sometimes begin implementing it the same day.

I bring my own ideas, big-picture thinking, and business management perspective to that process. I naturally look for how different technologies could synergize, where they might fit, and what would make them useful. AI helps me explore those connections and put my ideas to the test.

AI can be incredibly useful, but getting something worthwhile out of it takes actual effort (yeah, that might change as it gets more advanced). The quality of the result often reflects the questions you ask, the context you provide, and the work you put into refining it. It won't necessarily come out well on the first try and can take a couple of attempts. AI can be convincing and still be wrong.

What Draws Me to the Future

I'm a dreamer, an optimist, and I have big ambitions for what the future could look like. I enjoy thinking about how AI and BCI technologies (as well as neurotech as a whole) might converge and what that could make possible.

What excites me most is how AI, brain-computer interfaces, and neuromodulation could work together to improve mental health care. I imagine a future where treatment can adapt to what's happening in an individual's brain, becoming more precise, effective, and responsive to their needs over time.

I also get excited about possibilities like BCI-enabled communication approaching telepathy. I sometimes get ahead of myself or overexplain an idea, and it doesn't always come across the way I picture it in my head. Being able to convey intent almost instantly is fascinating to imagine. It's fun to think about sci-fi adjacent topics like the singularity, mind uploading (and whole brain emulation), and other ideas that sound a little crazy, even when they're purely theoretical.

Outside BNS