Sanger comes to UCI from USC where his research focused on understanding the origins of pediatric movement disorders from both a biological and a computational perspective. Sanger holds a doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and a bachelor’s and master’s of science in applied mathematics from Harvard University. He studied pediatrics at Los Angeles County Medical Center, child neurology at Boston Children’s Hospital and movement disorders at Toronto Western Hospital and the Hospital for Sick Children. Sanger’s NIH-funded research includes work on understanding motor learning in children, the use of kinematic measurements to design assistive communication interfaces, and multiscale modeling of large-scale neural systems for control, with particular application to understanding the development of spasticity and dystonia. Techniques in his laboratory include repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, transcranial direct-current stimulation, mathematical modeling and the use of field-programmable gate arrays to perform high-speed simulations of neural development. Sanger has made important recent discoveries on the role of long-latency stretch reflexes in the genesis of childhood secondary dystonia.

Sanger is the vice president for research, chief scientific officer, and a staff physician in the Department of Neurology at the Children's Hospital of Orange County. He is also the vice chair of research for pediatrics at the School of Medicine. 

Ph.D., MIT
M.D., Harvard Medical School

Computational neuroscience, machine learning, failure models of biological network computing, robotic models of neurological disorders, dystonia, childhood movement disorders, biological signal processing, adaptive control, stochastic systems