Meet the Designer Behind Neuralink’s Surgical Robot

Afshin Mehin has become the go-to designer for companies working on devices that aim to tap into or modulate the brain. The creative agency he founded, San Francisco–based Card79, has worked with Elon Musk’s Neuralink to design a surgical robot for installing a coin-sized implant into people’s heads. The device, known as a brain-computer interface, records and transmits brain activity with the goal of enabling paralyzed people to control a computer.

Mehin worked with Neuralink to design the external parts of this system—the installation robot and also a wearable that would sit behind the ear and transfer data and power to an implanted wireless receiver. This device, which looked like a sleek, white hearing aid, was an early prototype. Neuralink unveiled a more simplified design in 2020 that is cosmetically invisible once in place, but it kept the look and feel of the robot that Card79 ...